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Lostgallifreyan · January 2nd 10, 09:36 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna

tom wrote in
. net:

Lostgallifreyan wrote:
"Mike Kaliski" wrote in news:dbydneBBW-
:

"Lostgallifreyan" wrote in message
. ..
"Mike Kaliski" wrote in news:Et-dnelSh-
:

the solution to life, the universe and everything is 42.
All at sixes and sevens.
As I recall, the question showed that the universe was truly screwed
up...

Cheers

Mike G0ULI

least one of the books, and
I don't remember if the question was ever settled. There were a couple
of philosophers with Pythonesque silly names who asked Deep Thought the
Meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything, and whose equally silly
named decendents spent their final years cleaning up on the chat show
circuit, but the computer designed to calculate the original question
got thoroughly panned by a small fleet of yellow butter-pat shaped
ships full of petulant Vogons and Dentrassi chefs.

But I sort of sense how Douglas Adams thinks, a small and persistent
obervation blooming strangely. No-one ever spelled out that 42 came
from seven sixes or six sevens, but 'all at sixes and sevens' is an
English colloquailism that Douglas Adams would not have ignored.
Basically the idea is chaos, but not exactly chaos, just an arbitrary
collection is decreet entities that exist in no clear relation to each
other, so all kinds of silly possibilities exist. Fits, no? And
don't get me started on how I think he came up with 'The Long Dark
Teatime Of The Soul'...

Actually it comes out during the TV play and at
least one of the books that it's "what is 9 times 6?"

Adams denied what many here should quickly figure out.

tom
K0TAR

I never saw that one.. Read the books, but I don't remember that, at least
not with much meaning. Maybe just to indicate human capacity for coming up
with wrong answers from wrong questions? I doubt he ever spelled out what the
real roots were. A good magician doesn't deliberately and publicly spoil the
illusion (or in his case, allusion, perhaps). The one thing I'm fairly sure
of is thet the references were cultural, colloquial, and that's why so many
people got it. Without that it might have just been another impenetratable
space opera with humour thrown in.