by neufer » Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:46 pm
emc wrote:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080219.html
Don't tell my boss, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate today because I keep wanting to go back to this APOD and admire the view. It is not only breathtaking asthetically, it also sets my imagination running as to what might be discovered in the ISS Columbia "high" tech laboratory. Like maybe a need for a much larger mfg facility.
Can one CURTSEY in zero G?
"Perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."
---------------------------------------
<<Presently [Alice] began again. "I wonder if I shall fall fight through
the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk
with their heads downwards! The antipathies, I think-" (she was rather
glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all
the right word) "-but I shall have to ask them what the name of the
country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand? Or
Australia?" (and she tried to *CURTSEY* as she spoke- fancy,
*CURTSEYing* as you're falling through the air! Do you think you
could manage it?) "And what an ignorant little girl she'll think me
for asking! No, it'll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written
up somewhere.">>
---------------------------------------
42 was an important number for both Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams,
possibly, because that was the number of minutes it took to reach Australia.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Forty-Two George Jelliss
"In binary notation 42 = 101010."
http://www.outlanders.fsnet.co.uk/tlh501.htm
<<Devotees of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy will know that "the
Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything"
was determined by the computer 'Deep Thought' to be Forty-two.
Unfortunately in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe it was found
that 'the Question to the Ultimate Answer' was 'What do you get if you
multiply six by nine?' In base 13 as it happens '42' = (4 x 13) + 2 =
54, so a simple programming error might account for the anomaly!
Readers of an older generation were unsurprised by these revelations,
since they were well aware of the importance of 42 in the paradoxical
world of Lewis Carroll. For a start, the original title page of Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland boasted it contained 42 illustrations. And at
the trial of the Knave of Hearts when Alice started to grow larger again
the King invoked: "Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to
leave the court", and later claimed: "It's the oldest rule in the book".
Another Carrollian Rule 42, that of the Naval Code, according to the
Preface to The Hunting of the Snark, states: "No-one shall speak to the
Man at the Helm, and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no-one". The
first Fit of that poem mentions that the Baker, destined to be victim of
the Boojum, "had forty-two boxes all carefully packed, with his name
painted clearly on each ... all left behind on the beach", and "he had
seven coats on when he came, with three pairs of boots but had wholly
forgotten his name" in other words he was clearly "all at sixes and
sevens".
In the second part of Carroll's later work Sylvie and Bruno, the German
professor describes a railway system in which the trains move under
gravity: "Each railway is in a long tunnel, perfectly straight: so of
course the middle of it is nearer the centre of the globe than the two
ends: so every train runs halfway downhill, and that gives it force
enough to run the other half uphill" (what is this if not an example of
Science Fiction worthy of Verne?). I am informed (reliably?) that such a
grav(it)y train would make all its trips in 42 minutes, the same time it
would take an object to fall through the centre of the earth, the time
constant regardless of the tunnel's length.>>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[quote="emc"][url]http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080219.html[/url]
Don't tell my boss, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate today because I keep wanting to go back to this APOD and admire the view. It is not only breathtaking asthetically, it also sets my imagination running as to what might be discovered in the ISS Columbia "high" tech laboratory. Like maybe a need for a much larger mfg facility.[/quote]
Can one CURTSEY in zero G?
"Perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere." :wink:
---------------------------------------
<<Presently [Alice] began again. "I wonder if I shall fall fight through
the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk
with their heads downwards! The antipathies, I think-" (she was rather
glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all
the right word) "-but I shall have to ask them what the name of the
country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand? Or
Australia?" (and she tried to *CURTSEY* as she spoke- fancy,
*CURTSEYing* as you're falling through the air! Do you think you
could manage it?) "And what an ignorant little girl she'll think me
for asking! No, it'll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written
up somewhere.">>
---------------------------------------
42 was an important number for both Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams,
possibly, because that was the number of minutes it took to reach Australia.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Forty-Two George Jelliss
"In binary notation 42 = 101010."
http://www.outlanders.fsnet.co.uk/tlh501.htm
<<Devotees of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy will know that "the
Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything"
was determined by the computer 'Deep Thought' to be Forty-two.
Unfortunately in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe it was found
that 'the Question to the Ultimate Answer' was 'What do you get if you
multiply six by nine?' In base 13 as it happens '42' = (4 x 13) + 2 =
54, so a simple programming error might account for the anomaly!
Readers of an older generation were unsurprised by these revelations,
since they were well aware of the importance of 42 in the paradoxical
world of Lewis Carroll. For a start, the original title page of Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland boasted it contained 42 illustrations. And at
the trial of the Knave of Hearts when Alice started to grow larger again
the King invoked: "Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to
leave the court", and later claimed: "It's the oldest rule in the book".
Another Carrollian Rule 42, that of the Naval Code, according to the
Preface to The Hunting of the Snark, states: "No-one shall speak to the
Man at the Helm, and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no-one". The
first Fit of that poem mentions that the Baker, destined to be victim of
the Boojum, "had forty-two boxes all carefully packed, with his name
painted clearly on each ... all left behind on the beach", and "he had
seven coats on when he came, with three pairs of boots but had wholly
forgotten his name" in other words he was clearly "all at sixes and
sevens".
In the second part of Carroll's later work Sylvie and Bruno, the German
professor describes a railway system in which the trains move under
gravity: "Each railway is in a long tunnel, perfectly straight: so of
course the middle of it is nearer the centre of the globe than the two
ends: so every train runs halfway downhill, and that gives it force
enough to run the other half uphill" (what is this if not an example of
Science Fiction worthy of Verne?). I am informed (reliably?) that such a
grav(it)y train would make all its trips in 42 minutes, the same time it
would take an object to fall through the centre of the earth, the time
constant regardless of the tunnel's length.>>
-------------------------------------------------------------------