mad science

[LowGear]

Less Subtle:

[highwater]

I started watching the "turbo" utube clip, with a cup of coffee in left hand.
Had to set the coffee down.

Randall

[vdubnut62]

Priceless!
Ron.

[fabricator]

It's been well known that the core has been cooling since the surface became solid, as the core cools the generator put out less energy, less energy = weaker magnetic field.
The moon is also getting farther away every year, tidal forces are one thing that helps keep the core hot.
So, sometime in the next half billion years or so we will be more like Mars which has little or no magnetic field and no cosmic ray protection, so, if you plan on living 250 million years or so now would be the time to start panicking.

[mike90045]

  Maybe it's when something caused the earths field to reverse, and mid-reversal, it's totally absent.  Fossil history shows it's happened a couple times in the past.....

[LowGear]

I first heard about it in an anthropology class discussing ancient fire pits in Australia.

Casey

[quinnf]

[snip]  ... so, if you plan on living 250 million years or so now would be the time to start panicking.

Don't Panic!  There is increasing evidence that Homo sapiens are actually descended from an extra-terrestrial race, the Golgafrinchans, who consisted of . . . well, I'll let Wikipedia's entry on the subject speak to that:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy

"Golgafrincham is a red semi-desert planet that is home of the Great Circling Poets of Arium and a species of particularly inspiring lichen. Its people decided it was time to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population, and so the descendants of the Circling Poets concocted a story that their planet would shortly be destroyed in a great catastrophe. (It was apparently under threat from a "mutant star goat"). The useless third of the population (consisting of hairdressers, tired TV producers*, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants, telephone sanitisers and the like) were packed into the B-Ark, one of three purported giant Ark spaceships, and told that everyone else would follow shortly in the other two. The other two thirds of the population, of course, did not follow and "led full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone".

The B-Ark was programmed to crash-land on a suitably remote planet on one of the outer spiral arms of the galaxy, which happened to be Earth, and the Golgafrinchan rejects gradually mingled with and usurped the native cavemen, becoming the ancestors of humanity and thereby altering and distorting the course of the great experiment to find the question for the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, or so Ford Prefect presumes. A lot of them didn't make it through the winter three years prior to Arthur Dent's reunion with Ford Prefect, and the few who remained in the spring said they needed a holiday and set out on a raft.

History says they must have survived."

According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy by the late Douglas Adams, consisting of 5 books at last count, the earth will one day be destroyed by a Vogon constructor fleet in order to make room for a hyperspace bypass.  Shortly before that happens, the world's dolphins** will suddenly appear to vanish, having escaped by their own means. 

** It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, Man had always assumed that he was the most intelligent species occupying the planet, instead of the *third* most intelligent. The second most intelligent were of course dolphins who had long known of the impending destruction of earth. They had on many occasions tried to alert mankind but their warnings were mistakenly interpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for titbits. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a suprisingly sophisticated attempt at doing a double backflip through a hoop while whistling the star-spangled banner but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

Quinn

[mobile_bob]

Quinn

you're killing me!

lmao

bob g

[fabricator]

Ya gotta watch the movie Bob, it's worth it, although when I read "The hitch hikers guide to the galaxy" It pretty much kept me in stitches for a long time.

[quinnf]

I know you've heard me go on about it, Bob, but it's true.  How else can you watch the evening news or listen to politicians speak and make sense of it?  

The Guide clearly says that the earth was specially constructed by a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings whose intrusion into our time-space continuum takes the form of white mice Mus musculus (sorry, had to know that for an exam 30 years ago and wanted to make use of that bit of knowledge).  The purpose of the computer was to, once and for all, determine what was the corresponding question, to which the answer was 42, about Life, the Universe, and Everything (the title of the third book in the 5-book trilogy).  After millions of years, and countless lives had been lived on the earth/computer matrix, a Vogon constructor fleet suddenly showed up and destroyed the earth just before the program was to conclude with the Great Question about Life, the Universe and Everying (to which the answer was 42).  

However, one earthling managed to escape by means of hitching a ride on one of the Vogon ships (the Dentrassi cooks* aboard the ships hate the Vogons) and eventually made his way to the proto-earth by way of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (title of Adams' second book), only to discover that the question was, was . . .

scroll down . . .

wait for it . . .

"What do you get when you multiply 8 times 6?"  
To which the protagonist mutters, "I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."

q.

*The Dentrassis are the best cooks and the best drink mixers and they don't give a wet slap about anything else. And they'll always help hitchhikers aboard, partly because they like the company, but mostly because it annoys the Vogons.

[highwater]

and I thought the "turbo" video was funny.

man build fire
make cave warm
i am man

What has really changed?

Randall

[AdeV]

the 5-book trilogy

The subtitle on the 5th book was "The increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy"...

The radio series was the original - and widely regarded as best - version. Personally, I enjoyed the books - particularly the first 3, 4th was pretty good, it was wearing a little thin by the 5th unfortunately.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (and the sequel - The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul) are also well worth a read. Gently tells us to "find someone who looks like they know where they're going, and follow them" - the results are always interesting, if not entirely what you might expect... The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is described as that period of Sunday afternooon after you've taken all the baths you can reasonably take...

DNA was a brilliant - albeit troubled - author, and his untimely death robbed us of untold literary gems.

[cgwymp]

The radio series was the original - and widely regarded as best - version.

...and vastly superior to the movie. The TV show was pretty good if you can get past the very cheesy (but at the time pretty good, especially considering the budget) special effects.

"Last Chance to See" is also well worth the read.

Finally, check this out:
http://www.vintagemacworld.com/iifx.html

Douglas Adams, RIP

[Thob]

...
"What do you get when you multiply 8 times 6?"  
...

Actually, the question is

"What do you get when multiply 6 by 9?"

and you get bonus points if you know how that works out to 42, which is the answer given much earlier.

[vdubnut62]

Ok, I have my towel..................................
Ron.