[b]Douglas Adams
Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.[/b]
Or, as Freud suggested, slip through. And often with disasterous consequences.
The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.”
Isn’t this from a Star Trek movie?
What happens if I press this button?
I wouldn’t…
Oh.
What happened?
A sign lit up, saying ‘Please do not press this button again.’
Anyone here know if he did?
I was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
No, really, my own wife more or less expressed the same.
of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.
Okay, Kids, let’s pin this down. You for me, me for you.
Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? - because you’re not!’
Just not your religion, right?