h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sceptic

>>I recall a game the police used to play about 15 years ago which finally got rumbled when they kept stopping the same car. It was 'car billiards'<<

This may be an urban legend, as I heard it told about car thieves, ie you would find your car gone, but parked nearby would be an abandoned car of the previous colour, and this went on until the police laid a honey trap in a pink car...

As an aside, it makes a good in-car children's game...

Jez

Cheers Nogg. It can be construed other than as an attribution to Badge, as I read it again. Shouldn't have bothered mentioning it except that I believe good old adrenalin had become 'epinephrine' by that point. The real subjects encountered actors who had already allegedly been given the stuff, and acted either aggressively or in an elated way. Here's a link to a brief summary: http://www.holah.karoo.net/schachter.htm

toxx

Today I am mostly serving...

toast, unsalted organic butter from Yorkshire cows, cherry jam from Scotland, decaf coffee, milk and sugar in two bowls, one with cyanide lumps and one without for the genuine posters - the trolls seem to have gone away, but you can never tell who is lurking, and under what name...

Tomorrow is my last posting day until after the weekend, when I am off to Scotland with one friend to visit others.

Yes, we will mostly if not all be pagan, probably all heathen

Singing, mead and poetry, and good food and company.

Have fun, the rest of you - and remember to bring your own breakfast

Jez - who somehow has never got round to needing to change her name...

I don't believe in god but it bothers me that the hydrogen that caused the big bang must have come from somewhere. None of the theories I have read 'cut the mustard', so what to think? Interesting that even Stephen Hawking (I bow down to your genius) does not dismiss the idea that there may be some sort of omnipotent being out there somewhwere. But a big guy in the sky. Don't think so.

I don't believe in god but it bothers me that the hydrogen that caused the big bang must have come from somewhere. None of the theories I have read 'cut the mustard', so what to think? Interesting that even Stephen Hawking (I bow down to your genius) does not dismiss the idea that there may be some sort of omnipotent being out there somewhwere. But a big guy in the sky? Don't think so.

Hi refined and welcome to GFoF.

You're labouring under a misconception about the big bang. Chemical elements weren't present at the time, crystallising out of the original superhot plasma as it expanded and cooled. Moreover the proportion of elements in interstellar gas (75% hydrogen, 25% helium, and a trace of lithium) is pretty much what big bang theory calculates. All other chemicals are produced by nuclear reactions in stars.

Having said that the question of where the initial singularity came from, (and indeed the question of whether such a question is even meaningful) have been the subject of some discussion. But all opinions on this are welcome.

Noggin

But all opinions on this are welcome.
In some distent time,some omnipitent being over indulged with sproats before attending a barbque did the rest.
effect ,increaseing the magnitude.

religion is only a reflection of mans personalty

<<"How about if only the chess pieces are involved in a conventional game, but there's also a game involving pawns versus the rest based on a system of point scoring and, of course, not involving the colours of the pieces. This could be calculated for every chess game. Would we always know whether this other game was being played or not by>> analysing the moves?"

<>

You could probably tell if enough moves were made, and you knew that the moves were being made relatively wisely, and you had the time to analize it in detail.

Hi dimp. Yum, yum. I can pulverise that one, I think. But first I'd like to ask whether you would say the same thing about science. If not, why not?

OK then. If you mean 'man' (the human race) in general then there would be only one religion. So that doesn't work.

If you mean individuals, there would be no collective religions; just one per person. Hmmmm.

If you mean groups, then do all Muslims, Jews, Buddhists etc have personalities similar to the rest of their group and different from the others? Nah!

toxx

Hi, Toxxin...
Good answers to that post.. I couldn't think of any.

az
*up too late and too early*

The breakfast bar contains

toast made from fresh organic multigrain bread, blackcurrant jam (blackcurrent jam for the trolls ), honey and fresh yorkshire butter.

with juicy bits

and decaf

and a reminder to get your own breakfast tomorrow as I am in Scotland.

Jez the busy heathen - with a life

Hi Feline Female. I can't keep up with the changes to the rest of your name! Sometimes it's pleasing to think that a message might have raised questions and provoked thinking even in the absence of answers. I wonder how many lurkers are out there. The numbers on message boards that keep stats sometimes surprise me - significantly more than the contributors.

toxx

Make the game one in which the individual pieces are self controlling within the rules, give them an individual objective (such as staying on the board s long as possible). Allow them to learn new strategies as they go along. Will the game as a whole appear to have an objective?

Noggin

Noggin. A simpler version of that would be John Conway's 'Life'. Simpler because individual pieces have no control over what happens. All depends on the environment. However, 'God' - the real person placing the initial pieces on the board - may appear to have the intention of minimising or maximising the number of 'generations' of the pieces. The latter can be achieved by setting up an arrangement of pieces which alternates between two forms forever. This tends to look like evolution - which is the intent of the game really, I guess.

It would be interesting to reprogram it (there are hundreds of implementations around) to allow individual pieces to act - that shouldn't be too difficult. I think the easiest plan would be to allow the piece to move to an unoccupied adjacent square once per generation. Probably the outcome would be to screw up any stable pattern that is generated. That would probably be because of the demanding nature of the 'environment' rather than the intention of the pieces.

Hey. Have pieces of two 'colours' and they might have wars!

toxx

Often I semi-lurk, when the discussion is interesting (as it has been) but there really is nothing I can contribute... it's too philosophical, by which I mean that precise definitions are all-important, and sometimes words are being used in a sense more technical that I am used to.
But I love to read such conversations!