Star Wars Day

[Muddy]

my kids are excited about it

It's good stuff, my man.. He's just razzing you.

[Muddy]

I meant Twiki

Isn't the thing hanging around his neck some kind of self-aware supercomputer?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

It's good stuff, my man.. He's just razzing you.

[DemonGeminiX]

Isn't the thing hanging around his neck some kind of self-aware supercomputer?

If it was so super, then it would've been smart enough to at least ask for its own body instead of being lugged around by some other idiot robot's neck. A real supercomputer would've figured out how to make one for itself, all on its own.

[Griffin]

Not necessarily...

Deep Thought was a super computer the size of a small planet that was built from organic components and named "Earth".

[Pony]

[Pony]

[Griffin]

"pull my finger"

[DemonGeminiX]

Not necessarily...

Deep Thought was a super computer the size of a small planet that was built from organic components and named "Earth".

A planet-sized supercomputer doesn't need legs of its own.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

If it was so super, then it would've been smart enough to at least ask for its own body instead of being lugged around by some other idiot robot's neck. A real supercomputer would've figured out how to make one for itself, all on its own.

He's round, he could roll somewhere if he really wanted to

[Muddy]

Not necessarily...

Deep Thought was a super computer the size of a small planet that was built from organic components and named "Earth".

My mind just exploded.. *puff puff pass*

[DemonGeminiX]

My mind just exploded.. *puff puff pass*

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

[Griffin]

If you've never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, you should. Douglas Adams was a genius.

[Muddy]

I'll see if I can get a copy.. I prefer books over E-reading..

[Griffin]

This is my favorite story from Mr.Adams. It is in The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time which was published after he died.

“Cookies”

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.
Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do aclue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, What am I going to do?

In the end I thought Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice…” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and st back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

-Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“Cookies”