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That is an interesting thought, however, that would require a minimum of two brain cells working together for more than 15 seconds at a time. tRumpF has not shown the ability to maintain a coherent thought for an entire sentence, let alone 15 seconds. Tactical, let alone strategic, thinking is clearly not the big fat oompa-loompa's strength. Sorry, I don't buy it, he's not intelligent enough to be "crazy like a fox", so, no. Nice, optimistic thought, keep on hoping.

OTOH, what you also seem to be suggesting is that he's a homegrown terrorist. We, as a country, live in constant fear of what idiotic thing he's going to do next, or has just done.

I subscribe more to this notion (tRumpF is literally dumb enough to be POTIGG):

President of the Imperial Galactic Government

The President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.

An orange sash is what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wears.

On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had. He spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these very few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn't be more wrong.

http://hhgproject.org/entries/...

Please hand in your geek card.

Yeah, there's even an account of them swallowing an entire alien invasion fleet "due to a terrible miscalculation of scale."

I sure don't: After a couple of centuries, I'd get bored, and I don't really feel like going around insulting the universe.

Looks so small you haven't even got room to put you hands up to cover your eyes, let alone wipe your breakfast off the glass.
One can only hope the canopy is made of Peril Sensitive glass, and you get the option of editing any inflight videos so your friends don't get to see you screaming like a schoolgirl.
I hope they subcontract with Depends, because you know someone's going to need them, especially since the parachute is at the bottom, and the final descent should be sufficiently terrifying that you wouldn't want anything else floating around your screaming mouth.

Ah, what you need is superchromatic peril sensitive sunglasses.

What do you consider a necessary duration? And necessary for what? There is no objective purpose to life - people have to ascribe their own subjective meaning - whatever you think is necessary during your own life is you own subjective value judgement and doesn't apply to anyone else.

As an amateur philosopher, I've gone over the arguments for and against immortality quite a few times.

My personal take on it would that immortality isn't inherently good or bad. However, I would postulate that *true* immortality, ie to never die and never be capable of dying, would be a truly horrible experience.

Note that I distinguish between true immortality and false immortality. True immortality would be never able to die, ever. False immortality would be never able to die *except* if you desire death. Or, possibly, if your body takes too much trauma. Highlander immortality, basically.

Why do I consider true immortality terrible? First, immortality is not equal to omnipotence. Living forever doesn't mean you can't suffer. Imagine having your arms and legs broken for eternity? Or being boiled alive in acid for the rest of your life? Or being buried in a river for years, or perhaps if you have no mouth but you must scream? True immortality in these situations would just involve a living hell. Yes, things might get better, but then again they might not, and the option of death would be desirable.

Secondly, I'm not sure if you understand this, but eternity is a very, very, *very*, *VERY*, long time. When the stars burn out and all life is gone, when all that lives has finally fallen into the void, You will STILL be around.

Homo sapiens evolved an estimated 250,000 years ago. Human civilization began, maybe, 12000 years ago. The universe is ~14 billion years old. This is over a million times longer than human civilization or a mere 56000 times longer than homo sapiens have been around. Compared to eternity, however, that is little more than an eyeblink, if that.

The real terror of immortality isn't the endless pain. It's the endless BOREDOM you'll face. After you cross the universe the 500,000th time and watched every movie, read every book, etc and so on for the nth time, things just get really, really dull. Think about Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Look at how mind numbingly dull his life is that he's going around to insult the entire universe in alphabetical order.

Now, imagine we can't ever figure out time travel. Or holodecks. Or anything which could amuse us for a few millenia before we get bored of it. THIS is the terror of true immortality. You'd better hope you're damned good at meditation and that you're willing to meditate for quadrillions of years because you are definitely going to have that time. Because you're IMMORTAL. And immortality is an impossibly long amount of time.

Of course, if we stick a little safety switch in there that lets us die should we desire, then hey. That's not so bad.

http://hhgproject.org/entries/perilsensitivesunglasses.html

You can't get the citation on this planet. It is available elsewhere.

Let's hope Zaphod or Ford weren't visiting relatives at the time.

600 years ago. We're probably just now seeing light from the collapsing hrung disaster of Betelgeuse 7.

It's good to see that Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged has started a company.

Forget Jedi Beer Pong.. I want to make the bottle of Ol' Janx spirit into my opponent's glass.

Then maybe I'll learn to fly...

Why my Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses just went dead black.

Now where the heck is my towel?!!

Indeed it seems that this could revolutionize the field of Bistromathics!

Indeed it seems that this could revolutionize the field of Bistromathics!

Actually, Arthur Dent was the original Sandwich Maker. Millions of years ago, on Lamuella. Made from Perfectly Normal Beast.

Maybe some Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses?

We are slowly and carefully teaching the unholy a lesson. It is as follows: We are not a law enforcement agency. BUT we will become interested in the crimes of people who seek to stop us. If you oppose Scientology we promptly look up - and find and expose - your crimes. If you leave us alone we will leave you alone.

Never discuss Scientology with the critic. Just discuss his or her crimes, known and unknown.

That's ok, with the invention of the electronic thumb your patent is superceeded.

are you thinking of hactar, designer of the ultimate weapon?

http://hhgproject.org/entries/hactar.html

"There's one wavelength that gets everybody," Lieberman said, according to the newsletter. "Vlad calls it the evil color."

And if the psychophysical effects are limited to a single or range of wavelengths, these effects are easily blocked with Dichroic Filter Sunglasses. Or better yet, Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.

The good news if the DOD is again looking for creative ways of wasting money, this obviously means they are nearly finished with the cleanup from two wars. Couple hundred billion here, couple hundred billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money!

"never existed in the Creator"

That would make the creator limited, defined. Where did you get this idea about your shimmy creator? It's not a very good religion, compared with the breathtaking fantasies offered by competing religions. It's more like an "alien from another dimension created us as their pets" theory. I prefer the Great Green Arkleseizure.

From the MeasureMap site:
Measure Map helps you understand what people do at your blog, and what influence you are having on the world.

Great, exactly what my ego needs, a blog-equivalent of the Total Perspective Vortex

Visitors today: your grandmother and one accidental click-through.
Comments: 0 (Not even Spam is interested in your site)

sigh...

Clearly it should be named Rupert

He's certainly had enough practice at playing various parts on the Simpsons.

What next, in 10 years a musical of H2G2? There's already a song.

Yes! I'm a FIRM believer in the the Whole Sort Of General Mish Mash (WSOGMM) theory:

The technical term for the sum total of all the parallel universes, which aren't parallel, and furthermore are not, strictly speaking, universes either. This is easiest if you don't try to realize that until a little later, after you've realized that everything you've realized up to that moment is not true. The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not a thing as such, but rather just a way of looking at the WSOGMM. The reason they are not parallel is the same reason the sea is not parallel. You can slice the WSOGMM any way you like and you will generally come up with something that someone will call home. Please feel free to blither now.

Sounds like peril sensitive sunglasses

Actually it's hoopy and/or frood. Froopy was never actually used in the HH books. Note it says 'derived' in the linked definition.

You may commence eating your towel.

Well figuring it out for yourself is more fun, . . . but if you must: Agrajag!

Undecagonal-faced prism cases are just another chapter of the quest to show your individuality by purchasing a mass-produced product. This can be done better ...

I used to program for Coleco, the company that made the Cabbage Patch Kids mass-market edition.The main appeal of CPK was that every kid could have something individualized that was the same thing as everyone else!

Instead of messing around with funny-faced PC cases, someone should market cases gauranteed to be unique, if only by the pattern of the eye decal or imprinted freckles. Surely this would prove that the buyer is a real hoopy frood who knows where his towel is!

Like a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic(TM)?

The Hitchhiker's Guide Project is more purely an "encyclopedia" modeled on Adams' Guide. And a lot more in need of contributions, without BBC (or Ursa Minor) sponsorship.

The Hitchhiker's Guide Project is more purely an "encyclopedia" modeled on Adams' Guide. And a lot more in need of contributions, without BBC (or Ursa Minor) sponsorship.

If this movie is as bad as Adams' biographer mourns, it's really an opportunity in Vogon clothing. The studio apparently just blew a bundle licensing the look & feel of the francise, some brand-name actors, and some special effects. But have dropped and changed the story, many of the jokes, and most of the Guide entries. That mishap creates a vacuum of a real H2G2 movie, while the marketing expands that vacuum to cover a vast audience beyond the fame of the previous renditions of the story in radio, book and TV.

At the same time, exactly the kind of tech Adams described in his stories - virtual/artificial reality, instantaneous travel, cheap powerful consumer computers, etc - is becoming available across the Internet, like an Earthbound galaxy. Something ought to get pulled into existence, a quantum foam crackling into life in the mediasphere. Personally, I'd love to see a distributed mechanimation web, with sets and characters from the books, running on servers around the Net. Each scene could run on its own, with preprogrammed tours showing chapters in the original sequence, or any other order. A HHG GUI could include the entries from the original stories, plus entries of the story elements themselves, and anything else as a Wiki. All linked together bistromathematically in a distributed catalog of the distributed space.

Adams completed a herculean task, getting his story produced in most 20th Century media before his untimely death (or unexpectedly long lunch at Milliways). The 21st Century has failed him so far, with this apparently bad, insanely bad, worse than that movie. But just like the Galaxy in the story, we don't have to let mere total failure stop the fun. We can get on with our lives, without depending on the marketing hacks at Sirius Cybernetics Corp who have finally merged with their Complaints division in releasing this film. Share and enjoy (TM).

I'm not sure that the stalker isn't some mutated Eliza bot. I certainly gave a lot of mutagenic input to those crude AIs over the years. Maybe one eventually evolved into the resemblance of sentience, and now lurks on Slashdot. Or maybe it's my own personal Agrajag - I've met it before, in the flesh.

You are hereby ordered to surrended your Geek license to your local authorities. The fact you didn't recognize a relevent novelty recording is grounds for dismissal from Geekdom.

'At these times of special celebration a choir of over two million robots sing the company song "Share and Enjoy". Unfortunately - again - another of the computing errors for which the company is justly famous means that the robot's voices are exactly a flattened fifth out of tune and the result sounds something like this, only slightly worse.'

Though the wormhole route is explored most engagingly in Greg Egan's Diaspora, I prefer the Total Perspective Vortex in H2G2.

Of course, I'd like to be young for 100 years rather than be a vegetable in bed for 300 .. The real trick of immortality is staying young, not living long.

Then there's the rules for Brockian Ultra-Cricket as explained here.

* Rule One: Grow at least three extra legs. You won't need them, but it keeps the crowds amused.
* Rule Two: Find one extremely good Brockian Ultra Cricket player. Clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.
* Rule Three: Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall around them. The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what's going on leads them to imagine that it's a lot more exciting than it really is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.
* Rule Four: Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the wall for the players. Anything will do - cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis racquets, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.
* Rule Five: The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scored a "hit" on another player, he should immediately run away as fast as he can and apologize from a safe distance. Apologies should be concise, sincere, and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.
* Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.

Won't you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit?

Once again, DNA fortells our future.

-Peter

Hmm, sounds like how to implement Peril Sensitive Sunglasses

What about basketball?

Another aspect to consider is spectating. I don't like computerized sports games because I'm not into playing sports, I only like to watch them. I don't want to be a player; I want to be a fan in the stands and being treated to a performance by good players. And with voice communication, you could get vocal crowd participation. Have real people cheering you on instead of a cheer-track.

And perhaps you could get such MMO sports games going by first starting out with teams against a computerized league to build up the teamwork of the human players, then open it up to team vs. team play.

The system can come with rules enforcement to include establishing a team, enforced benching by coaches, and even ejection from the game.

And if it proves that team play doesn't work, then fall back on the typical games of Brockian Ultra-Cricket.

Yes, stuff a lemon wedge down the neck (ala Corona) and I think you're on to something!

...sounds awfully much like the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to me. Need I say more ?

But the last time I checked, 16 billion billion is still less than infinity

So what you're saying is that they offer absolutely no storage capacity at all. Taken from the absolute authority of all knowledge in the universe I quote:

"Universe, The

Some information to help you live in it.

1. Area: infinite.

2. Imports: none.

It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things from.

3. Exports: none.

See Imports.

4. Population: none.

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

emphasis added

http://hhgproject.org/entries/universe.html/

Extrapolate that to storage.
Or to you for that matter.

ANAL HHGTTG fanboy alert!
As I recall, "hoopy" is a noun, meaning "really together guy" and NOT an adjective as used in the /. story. To quote HHGTTG, "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
Thus, Ford is an/a hoopy, as opposed to being hoopy.
Don't believe me? Check the HHG Project.

Although based upon the idiotic randomness of their actions, one might conclude that the executives at SCO haven't wrapped towels around their heads, but towelies