haha! i knew i was right! lol

Arthur's Scrabble tiles

The Ultimate Question?At the end of the first radio series, the television series, and the book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second of the five-book 'trilogy,' Arthur Dent — as the last human to have left the Earth before its destruction, therefore the portion of the computer matrix most likely to hold the question — attempts to discover the Question by extracting it from his unconscious mind, through pulling Scrabble letters at random out of a sack. The result is the sentence "WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE."

The generation of this "question" is actually impossible with a single, standard set of Scrabble letters (which, interestingly, has 42 vowels). Such a set only has two Ys; but the set shown in the TV series has clearly been handmade from memory, so the question buried within Arthur's brainwaves may have influenced him in creating it. In the original radio version of the story, however, it is made clear that Arthur has been travelling all along with a pocket Scrabble set from Earth.

"Six by nine. Forty-two."
"That's it. That's all there is."
Of course, 6 × 9 is 54, not 42. There are several possible interpretations of this. One would be that Arthur indeed discovered the Ultimate Question, which doesn't match the Answer simply because the universe is bizarre and irrational. Arthur Dent accepts this as being the reason in the radio series, when he remarks, "I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe." However, this explanation is contradicted by the book, particularly by the fact that the Earth's computation of the Question had not finished when it was destroyed.

Another explanation is that the program (Earth) would have run correctly if not for the interference of events such as the crash landing of the Golgafrinchans. These important modifications introduced error into the program and caused it to discover the wrong question. This accounts for the irrational nature of the question in Arthur's mind, as he himself is a descendant of the Golgafrinchans. It could in fact be that the question in Arthur's mind is a warped version of the true question.

It is also possible, given Adams' often bleak view of technology (in the late 1970s), that the 6 × 9 = 42 answer is meant to indicate that the Earth project was a flawed design to begin with, one that was always going to produce the wrong question even if the program had been run successfully.

It was later pointed out by readers that 6 × 9 = 42 if the calculations are performed in base 13, not base 10. Douglas Adams has averred that he was not aware of this at the time, and repeatedly dismissed this as an irrelevant concoction, saying that "nobody writes jokes in base 13 [...] I may be a pretty sad person, but I don't make jokes in base 13."



man i feel better about myself now. since i had been doing lateral thinking puzzles earlier....believe me they make me feel really stupid.

on to your lives.
♥

oh my. haha

"The Guide says there is an art to flying," said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." He smiled weakly. He pointed at the knees of his trousers and held his arms up to show the elbows. They were all torn and worn through.

"I haven't done very well so far," he said. He stuck out his hand. "I'm very glad to see you again, Arthur," he added.


♥

i finished the book!
so
ok this is bugging the crap out of me



"Right," said Ford, "close your eyes. Pull them out. Come on come on, come on."

Arthur closed his eyes and plunged his hand into the towelful of stones. He jiggled them about, pulled out four and handed them to Ford. Ford laid them along the ground in the order he got them.

"W," said Ford, "H, A, T ... What!"

He blinked.

"I think it's working!" he said.

Arthur pushed three more at him.

"D, O, Y ... Doy. Oh perhaps it isn't working," said Ford.

"Here's the next three."

"O, U, G ... Doyoug ... It's not making sense I'm afraid."

Arthur pulled another two from the bag. Ford put them in place.

"E, T, doyouget ... Do you get!" shouted Ford, "it is working! This is amazing, it really is working!"

"More here." Arthur was throwing them out feverishly as fast as he could go.

"I, F," said Ford, "Y, O, U, ... M, U, L, T, I, P, L, Y, ... What do you get if you multiply, ... S, I, X, ... six, B, Y, by, six by ... what do you get if you multiply six by ... N, I, N, E, ... six by nine ..." He paused. "Come on, where's the next one?"

"Er, that's the lot," said Arthur, "that's all there were."

He sat back, nonplussed.

He rooted around again in the knotted up towel but there were no more letters.

"You mean that's it?" said Ford.

"That's it."

"Six by nine. Forty-two."

"That's it. That's all there is."



six times nine = 54


AHHH!!!!!!!


oh my goodness!

well....i'm sure something will happen in the next book?

♥

online books :]]

oh my goodness!!

http://forevergeek.com/entertainment/complete_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galaxy_book_online.php


the books.....online :]

Finally!

the second book is finally getting interesting. once zaphod got into the total Perspectice Vortex, i wanted to read more. yay for the restauraunt at the end of the universe! though a creature wanting to be eaten is quite weird....but the book did bring up a good point. hmm...i shall quote it?

"That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting thing I've ever heard."
"What's the problem, Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump.
"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing there inviting me to," said Arthur. "It's heartless."
"Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod.

see that's a very good point. i guess i should go vegetarian now....lol just kidding

umm....lets see what else was good....ohh getting a perspective of time travel. when Marvin was still on that planet and the others were on the heart of gold, it was interesting that the ship took them a bizzilion years into the future to eat at the restauraunt at the end of the universe. what was more interesting was that when they got there they got a phone call from marvin who had been waiting for them those bizzilion years, when for the heart of gold passangers it had only been a few minutes. strange how that goes...


well i suppose i'm back to reading. this book is due on Monday, so i must be done with it by then.

♥

I just got back from the library.....so I got the second book. The Restaurant at the end of the Universe. it's been pretty..odd so far. i think it's funny that the Vogan captain person has a "brain care specialist". yeah.....i dont understand why they call him that since he's employing the vogans..i didnt pay uch attention to that part. well...i havent gotten much farther than that so here's some questions for this book

Why do the Vogan's continue following the ship?
What's locked back in Zaphod's memory that he remembers randomly?
Why won't the stupid "Sirius Cybernetics Corporation" make a machine that works? all he wants is a cup of tea!

lol

well....back to reading

♥

I finished the first book!

though i told you that on the bus.....i need to blog before friday

well..it was a good book. i must say the movie kinda ruined it. zaphod in the movie is plain old creepy in my opinion. but he's pretty neat in the book.

uhhhhh i'm really not sure what to say.


deep thought was probably one of the funniest parts of the book. i really dont know why. i think that it was probably because how calm it was when it said...."seven and a half million years" and how the philosophers freaked out. that was pretty funny.

i guess i just wonder how the other books will be.


love!
and comment!

♥ becca

ok most definatly putting a title

man this book is random

i really liked the sperm whale and bowl of petunias part. well minus after the sperm whale crashed into a million pieces on the ground....now that was a little gross. but it made me laugh when he was falling. idk why.

i'm glad the movie didnt have the pieces of sperm whale on the ground. not good for movie making i suppose

well so i'm at the part where they're in Magratheans land things...lol yeah. umm its a little odd....and i think Zaphods a lunitic. but i do like the fact that "presidents of the galaxy" dont get power, they keep people from getting it. or however the book said it. i dont remember and i'm too lazy to look in the front of the book for it.

ok this part is really really confusing. explination?


"And there it was," said Zaphod, "clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had auterized all the synapses and electronically traumatized those two lumps of cerebellum."

all i got from that was that his brain was messed with by somebody with the initials Z.B. so im quite confused.

well back to reading i want to know who put gas in the chamber


♥ becca

oh my i'm actually reading the book now! yay!
umm...so far it's exactly like the movie. besides they left out when they were being dragged to the airlock to be put into space and "trillian" already knows about the earth being destroyed. very odd? question though.....why'd she change her name to "trillian"? idk why lol

well...more blogs later

<3 becca