Friday, November 16, 2012

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


The major problem, one of the major problems, for there are several, with governing people is that of who you get to do it. Or, rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well known and much lamented fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

I finally finished reading the five novel compilation of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' yesterday. To write such a book one has to be a genius and a champion of wit mixed with a general sciency mish mash. Apart from his regular gymnast with the space-time-probability axis, Mr. Douglas Adams' knack of inventing character names is highly commendable. It's like he just noticed an object, played around with it's spelling and then named it a small little planet at the center of the third probability axis of infinite improbable drive. Apart from his usual excellence in making up things, he quite enjoyed taking a dig at other irritating aspects of being an earthling, say religion, McDonalds, credit cards, telephones, astrology etc. And one of the great things about the book is how quotable it is. Flip open any page and you will have something clever written down. You can literally calendar your social network feeds with these quotes. Here's one more - 
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. 

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