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.
It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
91–100 of 133 posts
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#92I have a pet theory that though Adams believed he picked the number at random, that it probably had some significance to a person of his social background at that particular point in time. That is, in the spirit of the books themselves he drew it unknowingly from his environment. I think that 42 rang for him due it’s association with WW2. The type of (particularly British) humour he deploys in his writing is the sort…
> I think that 42 rang for him due it’s association with WW2.
Huh, what association is that? WWII started in 1939 (or 37 if you consider the second Sino-Japanese war to be part of it) and ended in 45.
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#93Seen a few Ask HNs where people asked that question: `What is the meaning of life?`. Well one thing I believe is: `The meaning of life is to find meaning in life ` Another quote I live by is, by Bukowski: “Find what you love and let it kill you” – Charles Bukowski I mean it makes sense right? Many people just haven't found their passion and go round like headless chickens!
Pretty off topic, but this quote is most certainly not from old Buck: https://bukowskiforum.com/threads/find-what-you-love-and-let...
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#94Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#95Incidental 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, of course.
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#96I have a pet theory that though Adams believed he picked the number at random, that it probably had some significance to a person of his social background at that particular point in time. That is, in the spirit of the books themselves he drew it unknowingly from his environment. I think that 42 rang for him due it’s association with WW2. The type of (particularly British) humour he deploys in his writing is the sort…
> I think that 42 rang for him due it’s association with WW2. Huh, what association is that? WWII started in 1939 (or 37 if you consider the second Sino-Japanese war to be part of it) and ended in 45.
I don’t want to get too into the details cause this is just idle speculation but I came across a less wholesome association with 42 in another numerological discussion …
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some comment I read ages ago convinced me that the real Ultimate Question is “pick a number, any number.” The two bits of evidence for this are paraphrased below. Marvin talking to the mattress: “I’m roughly a billion times smarter than you. For example, pick a number. Any number.” Mattress: “Ummmm…seven?” Marvin: “Wrong. You see?” Arthur, while aboard the Heart of Gold, says, “I’m disappointed we never figured out t…
More specifically, Marvin claimed to have a brain the size of a planet . Adams alluded elsewhere to how the march of technology had brought about galactic scale advances in miniaturisation and exponential growth in the capability of technology. When deep mind designed the earth she probably used the state of the art for that time however many billions of years ago, but Marvin being a more modern device is far more po…
A tangential question that has always bothered me is "How do you get to Alpha Centauri". Or to put it another way, I can probably set off to Alpha Centauri using today's technology. My corpse would arrive there probably in 130,000 years. Give or take an order of magnitude (I've not run the numbers properly). Now I'm extremely confident that the human race in the next 100 years could design a craft that would be able to travel to Alpha Centauri in less than 129,900 years. So. How do I get to alpha centauri?
Just a vaguely interesting question that bothers me.
Or to put it another way, how pissed off would you be when you set off to alpha centuri and you arrive to find your bloody grandson vaping and listening to Lil Nas x.
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
wouldn't six by nine be 54? Is this one just soaring over my head?
That's the joke. Everyone in the book thought it was THE ANSWER - but it wasn't. It was wrong.
I think it's a bit more subtle than that, it's not clear if the answer is wrong, the question is wrong, or both are correct and the universe is wrong (although the story does hint towards one in particular being wrong).
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The older I get the more I feel that the point of living is experience On the flip side I think the very modern take on "life = experience" can be badly interpreted. The trend is more about consuming experiences and destinations rather the living experiences, you could describe them as commercialized experiences (Disneyland, holiday resorts in very touristic countries, &c.)
Yup, exactly. My current take is that "pursue experiences instead of things" is primarily a meme that's being spread by countless businesses that want recurring revenue. Experiences are fleeting, so you have to keep buying them all over again - where a well-chosen thing is something you buy once, and it keeps yielding value (including, possibly, experiences) for a long time.
The money machine will embrace and corrupt whatever works.
Not looking for meaning doesn't mean spending the rest of your life at Disney Land.
Life is fleeting, love is fleeting, everything that means something is fleeting; framing and clinging destroys its essence.
Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question
#100I 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…
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