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

hi psi

Turn up: Err... I haven't given you first line yet. AAPS is big.

My problem always was that I that as jank says he Dutch passion for denonstrating their English. On my first trip to Amsterdam I only mey oone who didn't. As near he didn't understan me because of my 'Groniger accent.

Voiceover: I turned it uo by googling a noted timpanist.

Pirsig run: Thanks. An element of appropriate randomness is built in
bsy.

Oops.

I figured time was tight (tomorrow), so I took a chance that you might not mind your unknown name as first line-guess you might have to search the big AAAP, it is just c/o.

Sorry.

I'm a bit dim you see.

hi psi: tight: I seem to have misled you I am kicking around Edinburgh giving new boxer road trials until Rosyth Zeebrugge ferry thursday. C/O: When posted? I may have to get a post room search initiated. I dout I would be allowed to fossick about myself. dim:hardly though you might find this new 5live thread entertaining: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbfivelive/F2148564?thread=5613167&skip=0&show=20 'WRONG' on the Internet.;). I *will* resist and the implosion of my portable makes this easy. Unless I pony up for a new before my run. Notes to the timpanist : Hope holiday enjoyed . Suggest time to concentrate on the missing third album. Is the Compulsion '02 compilation a good intro? Off to the aerodrome bsy

c/o posted yesterday.

If no luck I'll issue a replacement on receipt of 1st line (if I detect it of course).

have a good one

"hardly though you might find this new 5live thread entertaining:"

I do admire your steely resolve.

Morning psi

Search initiated but nothing found yet. Not significant. 'Next day' delivery rarely happens now. PR closed at weekend.

First line: I will give it, though given the placement in durance vile of Jank's post which 'revealed' your identity an indirect approach may be necessary. How are you on cryptic crosswords?

replacement: No rush. The Pirsig run has random elements but also fixed points so it may catch up even if it turns up after I leave.

Not directly related but you will note that I have changed the subject line

Watch that space.

Wholly unnrelated to the above. I bought a copy of the latest 'New Scientist yesterday. An article about Hawking-Herzog's new 'theory' ( as hypothesis one presumes) of post big bang inflation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/06/26/scihawking126.xml

I become more and more convinced that Mr Standish (Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) may have been right about physicists

bsy

Bx4 (boredbyfour),

Am useless at cryptic crosswords but perhaps my astronomical skills will suffice*. Let's hope it turns up on Monday and saves us the trouble.

On post big bang inflation, well who knows, cosmology is a hoot isn't it? In 300 years maybe they will be saying '...and this post big bang inflation theory, first posited back in the 21st century, although flawed and incomplete, paved the way for our advanced nasal hair extraction devices.....'.

Was the Standish quote: "Very strange people, physicists - in my experience the ones who aren't dead are in some way very ill" ?

Funnily enough, I think I have read that book but I remember nothing about it.

* I'll be watching space. (Sorry, I'll get me coat....)

Morning psi

Boredbyfour/bX4: Both covered in PR search parameters.

'Cryptic: Strange I thought given our shared love of language games you would be. Let's try a musical one to get you started;

'Singing together we pitch the same tones in an appropriately named trade union'

followed by

'A bituminous confidence reverses`into an office factotum'

Standish: That's the man. I don't recall much either but the quote stuck

Cosmology: Indeed begins to resemble medieval theology more and more.

Nose hairs: . They will probably turn out to be the extrusions of quantum strings into the 'mundane' world.

Off to see if anything interesting in bookshops. I should resist.

Had hoped to hear Herb Geller Quartet tonight but he has been replaced by Peter King and the Paul Kirby Trio. Know the trio but I haven't heard King.

Funnily enough I'm terrible at normal crosswords too and I nearly always lose at scrabble. I suppose I'm no good with words.

Also I am unaware of all of the crptic conventions except one which is that 'muddled' or 'jumbled' means it is an anagram. 'Reverses' might mean part of the word is an answer to one of the clues but backwards?

So you might have to help me out as we go, a bit like the round britain quiz. Is the trade union 'UNISON'?

hi psi

musical clue: Spot on

reverse: Indeed synonyms for bituminous and a confidence in reverse order give office factotum, or head of a department in US government as an alternative.

btw. Short post on your 'ought-is' thread . Looks interesting. Wish I could join in but I don't really have time and I still owe you a response on 'cutting slack' before I go.

Telegraph link: I should of course have issued a health warning on the Telegraph account of the New Scientist article.

Its a bit muddled and the Hawking/Hertog position isn't really an attempt to contribute to the development of a TOE.

(Hawking published a paper fairly recently that claimed that physics was subject to an 'undecidablilty' somewhat akin to Gödel's ones mathematical systems and so a TOE was not possible. )

Much more interesting article in NS on the role of 'micro' RNA in replication and the expression of of proteins.

More evidence that 'nature' is not parsimonious
bsy

I got confidence = secret
and as far as bituminous = tar-like
and that office factotum could be secretary
So I was nearly there. Just needed to realise that reverse meant the order of the answers rather than letters, I needed to stop trying to think of synonyms for secret that were like tar and just glue tary on the end of secret. Doh. So close.

Have I work left to do on the musical clue or is 'unison' the answer, since to sing the same pitches together is to sing in unison?

Pity you can't join in on is/ought.

I wouldn't be in the least surprised if a TOE were impossible.

hi psi

So near: Cryptic crosswords are a bit dull. Once you know they conventions the are usually fairly obvious. If not, not not.

Also I was remiss I should have indicated that the answer was a 9 letter word. So pretty good for a noob.

Further work: Not necessary. You are there the c/o is complete

The watched space will soon show how anonymity can be replaced by eponymy.

is-ought: I'd quite like to get involved but I don't really have the time and I have yet to whether to get a replacement portable trip.

In any case it seems somewhat outwith the spirit of a 'Pirsig run'.


My 33 post on your ought is thread. Some things are a bit off-topic So:

Pinker also used the phrase 'auditory (not aural cheese cake)in 'How The Mind Works though its first public outing was in the symposium I mentioned.

An early discussion of the 'cheesecake' theory can be found here:

http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/~ic108/MMS/

though it predates Mithen's 'The Singing Neanderthal' and Levitin's 'This your Brain on Music' (Also one or two interesting articles by the neuroscientist Alan Harvey)

A reasonable review of Levitin's book can be found here:

http://www.humboldt.edu/~essays/schrorev12.html

He seems quite an interesting character; musician, sound consultant, record producer, sometime session man, music critic and Professor of cognitive psychology at McGill.

http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/levitin/

By contrast one might assume that the young Pinker didn't get out much since anyone with a passing knowledge of the Dury Trinity would have spotted the reproductive advantages that music might confer

On Fodor's 'The Mind Doesn't Work That Way', his 'The Modularity of the Mind' is also quite interesting in that he was one of the originators of the modern version of mental modularity but disagrees strongly with Pinker's interpretation.

Any of for an evening of 'cheesecake'.

Te Impossible TOE: I agree. So does Weinberg. So we are probably OK with this view.

bsy

moring psi

Attractions of new toy means I don't know if it has arrived yet.
Will check later today.

Must

bsy

hi chaps,

so there i was, reading lists from you both in hand, at gatwick airport. north terminal. home of the worst bookshop......as opposed to the south terminal where they have a gargantuan one to cater for all tastes.

so off i went with nothing to read....for 2 weeks

i did manage to find a 2nd hand english book shop where i managed to buy a Jeremy Clarkson book and a James Patterson novel......whoopee...

anyhoo, back home. ho hum.....

hope you are both well.

psi; figured out yat which DIIC product was made with nutty addict and which with sedated nutter? hope you are "enjoying" them both....

adios, hasta luego

Jank,
Welcome back!
You have my sympathy regarding the books.

On the two DIIC-Standouts for me tracks 2 and 4 on the 4 track one (they had some more interesting dissonances and textures) and 1 and 4 on the five track one (I liked the processing on the voice on 1 and the audacious use of chromatically descending major tenth intervals on 4).
On which is which I'm going to guess the 4 track one is nutty addict and the five track stabilised addict.

Some of it reminded me a little of Joy Division, some of early sabbath. But as you say, these things are subjective.

As you can see, the drop for bx4 hasn't gone smoothly so far.

Hi psi

Not arrived yet. Post room have looked but know to expect it.

I suggest we give it a few days before you resend.

btw. Steely resolve crumbles on entering a bookshop.

bsy

Evening Jank

Clarkson: That is true desperation. Hope you enjoyed it otherwise.

I made mistake of visiting a very big one in the place of many longhouses. The JJ Cale is no longer appropriate as themed road music.

Still in durance vile

bsy

hi psi

Nothing yet

c/o: Apparently a good idea to insert offshoot of a tree trunk or main railway line between 'together' and 'factotum'.

psi

I thought it was Youtube but it was Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/ianmckenzieuk

bsy

Boredbyfour,

Understood.