Interested Spectator got folks going in a thread started by snooze button that turned out really interesting. A discussion on logic, beliefs and once I got on there, an artists veiw on God, life and the universe.

The Great Deception - What if what we know was chosen deliberately to deceive us? ---

But faster than a fruitcake thread it has swelled up with comments on the whatever we were talking about :o)

Basicly it turned into a commentary on our beliefs in God, starting with the idea that belief in God is not even needed as the proof is there.

Of course there should be three things one should never mention in a social gathering god, politics, money, oh ya and Y2K :o)

But it doesn't seem to stop anyone here. So where are we going with this? There seems to be a passion for debate here and Y2K is now pretty much left for the history books and the coders.

Where is the human race going? Can we make a judgement call on the proof of God? What are recent understandings of the TOE (Theory of everything)?

These and many other interesting questions are very 21st. century. And we are almost there folks.

At some time we are going to have to pull the past forward and drag the future back so that mankind is centered within the world we have created.

Thank you for your considerations.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), January 12, 2000

Answers

Is the Theory of Everything (TOE) the same as my unified conspiracy theory? (I'd tell you what it is, but I don't want "them" to find out...)

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), January 12, 2000.

Mad Monk

Well I don't think so, it is hard to tell at times eh? TOE just seemed like a flash point for debate, cause everyone has a TOE :o)

Actually it would be hard to have a Theory of Everything that comprised the objective and the subjective, much the same as conspiracies. Proof can be an elucive thing.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), January 12, 2000.

Personally, I'm still working on the "Theory of Anything".

We do "live" in interesting times, no doubt!!

-- Michael (michaelteever@buffalo.com), January 12, 2000.

Mad Monk,

I could tell ya, but I'd hafta kill ya!

-- flora (***@__._), January 12, 2000.

Isn't the primary feature of that theory the number 42?

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 12, 2000.

WW -- A good friend of mine at IBM who specialized in testing had a team that ALWAYS used the number 42 to estimate project durations. Hey, why not?

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 12, 2000.

At the mention of TOEs the conversation goes to the lowest common universal denomenator, 42.

Well maybe if we are hitchhiking through the gallaxy we should work on THUMB. Just have to figure out what that means.

Funny I am more worried about the destiny of the forum than the destiny of the gallaxy but there you go.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), January 12, 2000.

The answer to the "Ultimate Question" of Life, the Universe and Everything is indeed forty- two.

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), January 12, 2000.

BD must have been different teams as my Sup the last IT job I had said they used to use 87 as the test point, answer to almost everything.

C

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 12, 2000.

Steve

thanks for the link :o)

 

Background Information

As any digital hardware engineer, or software engineer, can tell you, the number '42' in base ten is equal to '101010' in base two. This alternating pattern of ones and zeros illustrates DEEP Thought's indecision about the Ultimate Question.

Of course, in the original Hitchhiker's Guide radio scripts, when Arthur has the "cave man" put out Scrabble stones and the sentence "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" emerges, and then Arthur says "Six by nine? Forty-two? You know, I've always felt that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Universe." -- it is at this point that a faint and distant voice says "base thirteen!".

42 (base 13) is equal to 54 (base 10). (Of Course -- Douglas Adams has been quoted as saying " You just don't write jokes in base 13!" )
To dispel any myths about 42 (and to make Douglas Adams Happy!), Douglas Adams also wrote on USENET: The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story

If You have found some of DEEP Thought's calculations lying around, please make a note of them and send them to me dljones@lundeen.com

This page is dedicated to the admirable works of Douglas Adams, the well renowned author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (the increasingly innaccurately named Hitchhiker Trilogy), etc.

The following is a list of the places where DEEP Thought has accumulated the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything throughout the world.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), January 12, 2000.

I posted my reply in the original thread, and explained why, although I think we should all now move to this thread. If you agree with my reasoning about the old thread in my reply, say so in the old thread and I'll see you all here tommorrow.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 13, 2000.