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

Hello.

Just wondering if you can enlighten me about this mysterious entity who pops up in convos from time to time. Who was Hoo? What happened to Hoo? Why does this Hoo conjure up respect and scorn in people? Have you spoken to Hoo yourself? Has *anyone* actually spoken to Hoo? Does Hoo really exist?

Hoo definitely exists. U114627. He is a friend of mine, and we were in fact talking on the phone yesterday morning. About sexual perversity, as it happens.

His previous names on that account were Hoovooloo, which was often abbreviated to HVL or to Hoo, hence his new moniker.

He is a long-term researcher who is not - um - afraid to speak his considerable mind. He has also had more than one identity on h2g2.

He dislikes sloppy thinking, especially among evangelists and creationists.

He has a fairly forthright and extremely logical way of posting, and can be a nasty adversary. He had a long and very unpleasant run in with an evangelical fundamentalist called Justin the Preacher (JtP), for example. A lot of people are afraid of him, but he respects honesty, intelligence, well structured arguments.

He has an excellent sense of humour.

He had a fairly high profile on the site in 2001 and 2002. I pulled off the site a lot during 2003, but I got the impression he was offline for most of that year himself.

Adeleide / Della and her family had a long and complex run-in with him ac couple of years ago, as did Blicky, and because she knows Hoo and I are friends she has a tendency to assume that we gang up on her. However, like him, I dislike sloppy thinking, and I *really* dislike it when people say that I have said things which I have not in fact said. As a result, and because I deal with things point by point in much the same way Hoo can, she tends to provoke similar reactions in us, by winding us up in similar ways.

He still turns up on site occasionally, and may yet turn up in that thread.

Ben

Ah! Thank you very much. Perhaps I've spoken to him too, without knowing it.

I've come across Justin, though never took the opportunity to speak to him while he was here. I did start a thread defending his right to talk rubbish, though (did you see it?). I expect Hoo would have enjoyed shouting me down on that one. Maybe I should resurrect the thread....

Possibly. But you tend to know when you've been Hoovoolooed!

Ben

I'm starting to feel as though I've been deprived of some kind of rite-of-passage experience.

You flatter him.

B