The ASCII code 42 is for the asterisk symbol, and we all know the /*/ regex matches EVERYTHING. I am sorry I ruined it for you.
Were that the case, the answer would be "the asterisk".
It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
121–130 of 133 posts
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#122Schopenhauer used an equation with the answer of 42 to make a metaphysical point in “The World as Will and Idea.” I suspect this is the meaning Adams had in mind: As time has only one dimension, counting is the only arithmetical operation, to which all others may be reduced; and yet counting is just intuition or perception a priori, to which there is no hesitation in appealing here, and through which alone everything…
I'm really sorry, but this is distressing me no end: It should be (((7 + 9) x 8) -2) / 3 = 42. As written, it equals 25.6666...
I've been told that (-80538738812075974)^3 + (80435758145817515)^3 + (12602123297335631)^3 = 42
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really sorry, but this is distressing me no end: It should be (((7 + 9) x 8) -2) / 3 = 42. As written, it equals 25.6666...
Seems right to me. Google agrees. What am I missing?
I think you've got an interesting version of google. For me it says 25.6666
The problem is that the arithmetic operators only associate left to right if they're the same precedence. The precedence is indicated by the old acronym BEDMAS: Brackets are highest, then Exponentiation, then Division and Multiplication, then Addition and Subtraction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations
So the calculation as written in the original comment is (7 + (9 × 8) - 2)/3 = (7 + 72 - 2) / 3 = 77 / 3 = 25.666...
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#124But why did Douglas Adams think of 42? My theory is that it is from "times table" memorisation questions. Back in the day in the UK we learned "times tables" at school as a verbal by rote memorisation technique. For each "times table" you memorised up to "times twelve". And then the teacher might ask you in class the answer for a table you were supposed to have learned. First one to learn was "two twos are four, thre…
Stephen Fry knows. And from what I heard 42 is probably close to meaningless. Or a point that its meaningless is a meaning in itself.
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems right to me. Google agrees. What am I missing?
I think you've got an interesting version of google. For me it says 25.6666 The problem is that the arithmetic operators only associate left to right if they're the same precedence. The precedence is indicated by the old acronym BEDMAS: Brackets are highest, then Exponentiation, then Division and Multiplication, then Addition and Subtraction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations So the calculation as wri…
Ah, I thought “as written” meant you had written what they did as an example. I was googling your formatting, which of course is correct.
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#126I was 9 when he published Hitchhiker's guide. I'd just started reading and would go on to spend my teens reading ANYTHING I managed to lay my hands on. And throughout my teens everyone went on and on about Hitchhiker's Guide, and it just didn't... push me to read it. I eventually read it after being consrcipted. And it left me feeling as ambivalent as I felt before reading it. As the comments here evidence, people re…
Hitchhikers is more or less a series of vignettes that describe some human activity or historical event in such a way as to foreground it’s inherent absurdity. In a way, it’s meaning is to strip other things of meaning. Appreciating it goes hand in hand with appreciating Monty Python, who do the same thing. Hitchhikers is brilliant not insofar as it is layered with meaning as a work of literature, but in that it is q…
> ...poke fun at English society’s sacred cows.
so as an american i shouldn't feel too bad if i don't really get it?
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#127Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like the bypass reference is a very English joke, and therefore doesn't fully translate.
Bypasses exist in the US. I can’t believe they are never created in other countries that build highways.
Fair. To explain my thinking; in the UK we have lot less land area, so generally bypasses are pretty controversial, and when Adams was writing the books a lot of them were being created and it was very much in the public consciousness as an issue of the time.
Of course; it could be the same over there :D So my theory could also be wrong.
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#129Incidental and subjective opinion; but I do think that The Restaurant at the End of The Universe is the best book in the series. The commentary is deeper, the jokes are funnier and the story arc feels a lot less random whilst still being surreal. The scenes at the end of the book with the Golfrinchans is a masterclass in humourous writing with a truly nasty vein of bleakness. It also features the ultimate question, o…
The sapient cow that wants nothing more than to be eaten has stuck with me since the very first time I read it. It's like it was targeted right at militant vegans before there were militant vegans.
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#130“The idea for the title first cropped up while I was lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1971. Not particularly drunk, just the sort of drunk you get when you have a couple of stiff Gössers after not having eaten for two days straight, on account of being a penniless hitchhiker. We are talking of a mild inability to stand up.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy