Don’t Panic! - The Movie

Just listened to the Talk of the Nation story on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie which is scheduled to be released tomorrow. The audio of the show should be available online tomorrow and I will listen to it again.

I have to admit I really enjoyed the books though they were quite sacrilegious. I remember reading the first 3 books of the 5 volume trilogy to Geoff and Mystie long ago. I am not sure why the books resonated with me except that his social satire was hilarious. It provides many opportunities to discuss many areas with the kids - from the beginning of time to the restaurant at the end of the universe.

Of course that the meaning of life the universe and everything could be answered so simply, 42, is amazing. I did find the site Deep Thought which documents this answer through history, from the bible to today.

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

After seeing the movie I will have to read the books again. My only fear in watching the movie is that “the pictures are always better on the radio” or in my head.

Update: The movie was good. Went with Geoff and Brendan, my 2 oldest boys, and all three of us laughed through the whole movie. We did bring our towels (only those who have read the books will understand) and Brendan attended wearing a bathrobe.

They did leave out the explanation of the babel fish being a proof that God does not exist.