Cartoons
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Archive for March 8th, 2008
What on earth is 42?
Saturday, March 8th, 2008[Quote:]
It’s 30 years since Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy made its debut on BBC radio, but its most famous mystery is still waiting to be resolved.
The radio series - which subsequently became both bestselling book, television series and film - traces the travels around the galaxy of Arthur Dent, after the earth is destroyed to make way for a “hyperspatial express route”.
Possibly the most famous line in the whole book is the “answer to life, the universe, and everything” given by the supercomputer, Deep Thought.
For seven and a half million years, this stupendously powerful, office-block of a machine had whirred. When it came to announcing what it had discovered, crowds had quite understandably gathered. “You aren’t going to like it,” Deep Thought warned. “Forty-two,” it said, with infinite majesty and calm.
[Quote:]
But it’s more than just geek humor.
Adams didn’t just poke fun at his characters, he wrote with a real sympathy for them. Well, just look at the man, he was a person who cared about things like the extinction of bizarre species that the vast majority of humanity has never heard of, much less seen for themselves. Empathy. That’s the secret of reaching the apex of funniness. When the reader in his imagination steps into a character’s shoes, he takes the metaphorical pies in the face personally.
Adams wrote as if the way the universe is mattered.
He also wrote as if the way the universe is happens to be funny.
The fact that the way things are both matters and is funny isn’t exactly funny itself. Or rather it’s very funny, and it’s very something else, which there isn’t a perfect word for. To capture that something else, you’d have to write a bunch of books.
Which is just what Douglas Adams did.
Old lady and a Bank
Saturday, March 8th, 2008How many of you have always wanted to do this?
Keyboard for programmers
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Caucus chair uncovers discrepancies
Saturday, March 8th, 2008[Quote:]
Volunteers who worked the Jester Center caucus on Tuesday are suspicious of at least one of the caucus lists, the precinct chairman said late Thursday night. At least three students who signed the list verified that the candidates attached to their names were not the candidates they voted for.
Government senior Ray Skidmore, precinct chair for the voting precinct that includes all UT dorms, said one of the caucus volunteers on Thursday noticed almost identical handwriting on one of the caucus sheets. Volunteers were recounting the caucus numbers Wednesday and Thursday, Skidmore said, just to double-check before turning them in today. Information from all caucuses - forms and the official delegate counts - are due to the Travis County clerk’s office today by 6 p.m.
When recounting, the volunteer noticed a whole list had Sen. Hillary Clinton written in similar handwriting in the presidential preference column for each of the six voters on that list. Skidmore started calling each of the voters on the list when he reached finance senior Ronesha Holmes, who told him she did not write Clinton as her preference; Holmes said she was instructed to leave that line blank.
Rarely Seen Shuttle Pre-Flight Activities
Saturday, March 8th, 2008[Quote:]
These photos deserve a wide viewing audience: the amount of thought and engineering that goes into every launch is immense; each successful take-off represents the Mankind’s finest effort, and is a wonder to behold.
Just one of photos:
They said it would be Al Gore who caused it ……….. because he “wanted” it …….
Saturday, March 8th, 2008[Quote:]
They said, in the 2000 Presidential cycle, that if Gore were elected President, we’d see $4.00 gas.
No Gore.
One Monkey in a Man Suit and his Big Dick.
And look ….. what’s that ….. ?
The Daily Show also nails it:
Bungie Unscrews Previously Screwed Gamer
Saturday, March 8th, 2008Now this is customer service!
Blogging
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Snap Sun decision launches Java at iPhone
Saturday, March 8th, 2008[Quote:]
Less than a day after Apple unveiled its much-discussed iPhone SDK, Sun Microsystems has told the world it will build a Java Virtual Machine for Steve Job’s handheld status symbol.
“We’re very excited,” Eric Klein, Sun’s vice president of Java marketing, told the The Reg. “We’ve spent the last 24 hours furiously looking through what information was made publicly available, and we feel comfortable enough at this point on the information we have to commit the engineering resources to bring the JVM over to the iPhone and the iTouch as fast as our schedules and Apple’s release schedule will allow.”
