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

I think I'll eat it myself, just to be on the safe side.

Hmm..
Not available at .ca or .com but I did find the doodle at Google.fr
but am unable to decipher the meaning of the gadget in the second O.
It doesn't appear to be animated in any way.

Clicking on it links me to one report that offers no explanation, merely
acknowledging fact of the doodle and then expanding and expounding
on his influence (especially on Nazis and Fascists).

Happily, that report was translatable from French but it gives me
no insight into the image.

So does anyone understand what it is? Or what it means?
It don't look like cake.


~jwf~

PS:
For those considering a reply to my request but daunted by the prospect
of having to explain some deeper philosophical or historical context let me
assure you I do have some knowledge of Nietzsche (except perhaps how
to care about spelling his name correctly.)

That said, my bottom line is that he is no Kafka.

~jwf~

I, too, am completely bumfuzzled by this doodle.

Herr Nietzsche did not appear on the US google page, for excellent reasons, I suspect.

1. US people cannot pronounce him. Let alone spell him.
2. He gets sermons preached against him, by ministers who can't pronounce his name, and don't know who he was.

They should have put some music to his doodle, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-QFj59PON4

Having seen a picture of him, I think the second o is just his head. There's his moustache, and there's his brain (working hard, by the look of it).
Not knowing much about Nietzsche myself, I couldn't tell you if it illustrates some aspect of his writing/school of thinking.

I seem to recall, though, from my secondary education days (a *little* while ago...) that our philosophy teacher had said that the fascists views in his writings were actually his sister altering his works afterwards?
I've no idea how true that is, though.
I wasn't paying much attention in that class, and haven't given it much thought since.
Any ideas, anyone?

Nietzsche's sister might have had something to do with it. Nietzsche himself was nuttier than two fruitcakes, but his sister was a big-time fascist utopianist. She and her husband tried to found 'New Germania' in Paraguay.

I gather Nietzsche wasn't antisemitic, but his sister was.

Damn, the image is gone now. I wanted to take another look in light
of the theory that it might be some surrealist portrait of his head.

Can anyone find a link to it in the Google Doodle files?
Or even another report with some deeper analysis?

Not sure why it matters to me now - most likely just an ongoing
addictive impulse to understand the Google mind or convince myself
that I still have a mind of my own, y'know, what with god being dead
and all that. As I said, he's no Kafka. And I'm no Goethe.


~jwf~

Does this help at all . .. ... .................. . . . .. ...
http://www.google.com/doodles/friedrich-nietzsches-169th-birthday

Aye! That's the one.
Still can't make sense of the doodle image. It could be a face.
It seems to have some active kaliedoscopic effect with tiny pyramidic
mirrors or reflective crystals where the 'brain' would be. But it's still a
mystery as to what it all represents.

BTW: that page has links I've never seen before going to several
country-specific doodle files. Very interesting.

~jwf~

Now that I've finally had a chance to view it, I can see that it's simply a stylized head of Nietzche. The two overlapping dark circles near the bottom is a bushy mustache. The scintillating "pyramids" represent his thoughts, "crystalizing" I suppose.

I see... In left side profile... yes...
The large black oval thing that looks like a comic-sized
gelatin pill going into his mouth is his moustache.

Thanks BG. I knew your practiced scrutinizing eye could
make something out of it.

I guess at this point it goes without saying that this was
not one of Google's best efforts.

But I'm glad we found those other 'national' archives of things
that were never seen at .ca or .com; it makes one so fully aware
that North America is still so preoccupied with its own mythologies
that we are deprived of learning much about the rest of the whirled.

~jwf~

For example:
http://www.google.com/doodles/prokop-diviss-315th-birthday


~jwf~

216th anniversary of the first parachute jump. It's another interactive one, folks!


Geggs

216th anniversary of the first parachute jump.
And it's a playable one!


... And it seems it's not available on .com
UK, France, Germany and Canada are working, though.

Drat!

Y'all keep jumping the gun. If you wait until after midnight in the US, the doodles often show up here (on dot com) later.

Actually, since you posted only "4 hours ago", it must have not shown up until after 3 or 4 AM EST. Anyhoo... it's available now.

I must be missing something on the interactivity - I can
make it drift one way or the other (at an arbitrarily pre-set
and uncontrollable speed) but without no advance visual reference
to what might lie below the ground rushes up so quickly there is
no time to make any last minute adjustments to avoid landing on
a whale to the right or an elephant to the left. Most often I just
end up in the water.

Maybe I should be using the < and > keys instead of my mouse?
nd maybe the ^ key would slow my rate of descent?
Defying gravity?
Hmm...


~jwf~

<- -> keys do help. But yeah, you just gotta wing it and repeat. I think the wind gusts might be a bit random as well, so hitting the same landing spot is probably not easily repeatable.

So far I have seen a large town with people looking from the windows, a park with 2 couples, a windmill with a palm tree to the left and right of the whale is a harbour with a chariot waiting at the docks. Oh, and once I landed on a steep mountain.