So long...

[Ed_McCarron]

this is one of my favorite fansites...

http://www.floor42.com/

no particular reason...just is.  Not much info there, just a forum really

Why would you post that?  What kind of loser has time to hang out on some internet for...

Uh, nevermind.

[pointdablame]

listening to an audiobook isnt strictly reading 

where exactly did I say it was?

If he really doesn't "do books" though (which is completely absurd.. sorry Jouster), it is still imperative to hear the story.  The audiobook would do that quite well without all the mess of "reading" which seems to be disliked by Jouster

[Jouster]

It ain't like I can't read...I just don't enjoy it.  I'd rather spend two hours and watch the movie than two weeks to two months to read the book.  I know some people could read the book in a day...but reading (books anyway) puts me to sleep.  Plus...my ADD usually leads me to subconsciously read for a while when my mind goes off on a tangent...then when I come back to the book...I can never remember what the heck I just read on the last five pages and have to go back.  It's always been that way for me...reading simply doesn't hold my attention...doesn't generally matter what I read.

Jouster

[polaris]

listening to an audiobook isnt strictly reading 

where exactly did I say it was?

If he really doesn't "do books" though (which is completely absurd.. sorry Jouster), it is still imperative to hear the story.  The audiobook would do that quite well without all the mess of "reading" which seems to be disliked by Jouster

it was just meant to be a joke , hence the smiley face, sorry if it offended.

[saint]

I'm still boggling at "I don't do books".

That made me sad

[pointdablame]

listening to an audiobook isnt strictly reading 

where exactly did I say it was?

If he really doesn't "do books" though (which is completely absurd.. sorry Jouster), it is still imperative to hear the story.  The audiobook would do that quite well without all the mess of "reading" which seems to be disliked by Jouster

it was just meant to be a joke , hence the smiley face, sorry if it offended.

it'd take much more than that to offend me    I just wanted to clear up the fact that I don't think audiobooks are a replacement for reading... but if it's that or NOTHING, I'd take the audiobook.

[Texasmame]

I'm sure that fraud Gore will find a way to tie this in to Global Warming.   

[boykster]

I'm sure that fraud Gore will find a way to tie this in to Global Warming.   

Get back under your bridge TROLL!

Minimizing and politicizing the extinction of a species is as ignorant as you can get....

NICE!!!!!!!!!!

[Level42]

Guess where Level 42 comes from....

[Joystick Jerk]

I've heard of HHGTTG...never read it...never saw the flick either...therefore, wouldn't have a clue who wrote it.

There's too much stuff to read on the interwebs...I don't have time for static data.

Jouster

Did your mom snort a lot of ground up river dolphin when she was pregnant with you?

[jbox]

One too many pan-galactic gargle blasters me thinks... 

[DrewKaree]

I've heard of HHGTTG...never read it...never saw the flick either...therefore, wouldn't have a clue who wrote it.

There's too much stuff to read on the interwebs...I don't have time for static data.

Jouster

Did your mom snort a lot of ground up river dolphin when she was pregnant with you?

 

Extinction?  Never heard of the word

[boykster]

Extinction?  Never heard of the word

It's what happens when you take a shower...you ex-stink yourself....oh, you wouldn't know 'bout that, wouldja DK?  Bathing, that is.....

 

[DrewKaree]

The wife hits me with the garden hose once a month whether I need it or not.  That qualifies, right?

[shmokes]

Do you ever not need it?

[DrewKaree]

Do you ever not need it?

The beating, or the water?

[shmokes]

Yes

[DrewKaree]

No.

[FrizzleFried]

I'm sorry...am I supposed to know who Douglas Adams is??

Jouster

You ARE kidding...right?

[Jouster]

Just conducted a small test here at work...out of the 25 people I just asked...only one person knew who Douglas Adams was.  Which was pretty much how I figured it would turn out.

I got a few smart as$ comments from other people that didn't have a clue who he was.

Sorry to rain on everyone's parade...but I'm in the majority it seems.

Jouster

[Havok]

Just conducted a small test here at work...out of the 25 people I just asked...only one person knew who Douglas Adams was.  Which was pretty much how I figured it would turn out.

I got a few smart as$ comments from other people that didn't have a clue who he was.

Sorry to rain on everyone's parade...but I'm in the majority it seems.

Jouster

What's the average age of the people you work with? Also, I would just ask if they have ever heard of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - not Douglas Adams. Most people don't know who wrote what half the time...

[boykster]

His books aren't that great and he was kind of a pompous jerk in his speeches.

You're not missing too much.

Sure, everyone has an opinion.  And that jewish carpenter that lived 2000 years ago was a real nice guy, but I don't understand why they wrote all these books about him and get together on sundays to talk about it....

 

[boykster]

sense of humour is a very personal thing, much like religion.  We don't all like the same things, and hardly ever agree.

And last time I checked, the carpenter didn't write anything, it was other people who wrote about him.  So, no, I wasn't comparing Douglas Adams to anyone, just making the point that your interpretation of his body of works was valid, as was mine about another, completely different one.

I don't want this thread to get PH'd, so that's all I'm going to say about religion....if need be, I'll clean up my posts.

[polaris]

was jesus an atheist, im confused

[Jouster]

What's the average age of the people you work with?

Most of the people I asked are between 21 and 35.

Also, I would just ask if they have ever heard of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - not Douglas Adams. Most people don't know who wrote what half the time...

I think that just proved my point...if HHGTTG had been mentioned here, I'd have known more about what was being referenced...but I don't know many authors, and quite frankly don't care.  I know the ones that matter to me...which is a pretty short list.

Jouster

[Ed_McCarron]

Lot of incomplete ideas that he never finished. 

Funny how that happens when you die unexpectedly.

I'd consider Adams one of my favorite authors.

I'd wager that if Jouster took a few coconuts to work with him, noone would laugh, either.

[saint]

His books aren't that great and he was kind of a pompous jerk in his speeches.

You're not missing too much.

That's it. Get off my web site. Kneebiter.

[polaris]

pbj, funnily enough that was a joke i know jesus was a muslim.

im gonna open this up if i may further tend away from deceased dolphins which i think is genuinely so sad.
anyone like terry pratchett, when i first read his stuff i thought he was a poor mans adams but the more i read of his the more i really like him.

[boykster]

No, but Douglas Adams was.  Richard Dawkins has lately taken to claiming their were good buddies and has even dedicated his last novel to Adams.  Perhaps it's true, but I'm skeptical.

Does this help clarify it for you?  Richard Dawkins and Douglas Adams were good friends.  Douglas Adams introduced Dawkins to his wife, they worked together.  If this pseudo-eulogy for a lost friend doesn't convince you, I guess nothing will.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,490295,00.html

Richard Dawkins
Monday May 14, 2001
The Guardian


A lament for Douglas Adams, best known as author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who died on Saturday, aged 49, from a heart attack.
This is not an obituary; there'll be time enough for them. It is not a tribute, not a considered assessment of a brilliant life, not a eulogy. It is a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be carefully thought through. Douglas, you cannot be dead.

A sunny Saturday morning in May, ten past seven, shuffle out of bed, log in to email as usual. The usual blue bold headings drop into place, mostly junk, some expected, and my gaze absently follows them down the page. The name Douglas Adams catches my eye and I smile. That one, at least, will be good for a laugh. Then I do the classic double-take, back up the screen.
What did that heading actually say? Douglas Adams died of a heart attack a few hours ago. Then that other cliche, the words swelling before my eyes.

It must be part of the joke. It must be some other Douglas Adams. This is too ridiculous to be true. I must still be asleep. I open the message, from a well-known German software designer. It is no joke, I am fully awake. And it is the right - or rather the wrong - Douglas Adams. A sudden heart attack, in the gym in Santa Barbara. "Man, man, man, man oh man," the message concludes. Man indeed, what a man. A giant of a man, surely nearer seven foot than six, broad-shouldered, and he did not stoop like some very tall men who feel uncomfortable with their height. But nor did he swagger with the macho assertiveness that can be intimidating in a big man. He neither apologised for his height, nor flaunted it. It was part of the joke against himself.

One of the great wits of our age, his sophisticated humour was founded in a deep, amalgamated knowledge of literature and science, two of my great loves. And he introduced me to my wife - at his 40th birthday party.

He was exactly her age, they had worked together on Dr Who. Should I tell her now, or let her sleep a bit longer before shattering her day? He initiated our togeth erness and was a recurrently important part of it. I must tell her now.

Douglas and I met because I sent him an unsolicited fan letter - I think it is the only time I have ever written one. I had adored The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Then I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

As soon as I finished it I turned back to page one and read it straight through again - the only I time I have ever done that, and I wrote to tell him so. He replied that he was a fan of my books, and he invited me to his house in London. I have seldom met a more congenial spirit. Obviously I knew he would be funny. What I didn't know was how deeply read he was in science. I should have guessed, for you can't understand many of the jokes in Hitchhiker if you don't know a lot of advanced science. And in modern electronic technology he was a real expert. We talked science a lot, in private, and even in public at literary festivals and on the wireless or television. And he became my guru on all technical problems. Rather than struggle with some ill-written and incomprehensible manual in Pacific Rim English, I would fire off an email to Douglas. He would reply, often within minutes, whether in London or Santa Barbara, or some hotel room anywhere in the world. Unlike most staff of professional helplines, Douglas understood exactly my problem, knew exactly why it was troubling me, and always had the solution ready, lucidly and amusingly explained. Our frequent email exchanges brimmed with literary and scientific jokes and affectionately sardonic little asides. His technophilia shone through, but so did his rich sense of the absurd. The whole world was one big Monty Python sketch, and the follies of humanity are as comic in the world's silicon valleys as anywhere else.

He laughed at himself with equal good humour. At, for example, his epic bouts of writer's block ("I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by") when, according to legend, his publisher and book agent would lock him in a hotel room, with no telephone and nothing to do but write, releasing him only for supervised walks. If his enthusiasm ran away with him and he advanced a biological theory too eccentric for my professional scepticism to let pass, his mien at my dismissal of it would always be more humorously self-mocking than genuinely crestfallen. And he would have another go.

He laughed at his own jokes, which good comedians are supposed not to, but he did it with such charm that the jokes became even funnier. He was gently able to poke fun without wounding, and it would be aimed not at individuals but at their absurd ideas. To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow preordained for us, because we are so well suited to live in it, he mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle. Or there's this parable, which he told with huge enjoyment, whose moral leaps out with no further explanation. A man didn't understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained about high-frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, transmitters and receivers, amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren't there?"

Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender (he once climbed Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit to raise money to fight the cretinous trade in rhino horn), Apple Computer has lost its most eloquent apologist. And I have lost an irreplaceable intellectual companion and one of the kindest and funniest men I ever met. The day Douglas died, I officially received a happy piece of news, which would have delighted him. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone during the weeks I have secretly known about it, and now that I am allowed to it is too late.

The sun is shining, life must go on, seize the day and all those cliches.

We shall plant a tree this very day: a Douglas Fir, tall, upright, evergreen. It is the wrong time of year, but we'll give it our best shot.

Off to the arboretum.

[DrewKaree]

No, but Douglas Adams was.  Richard Dawkins has lately taken to claiming their were good buddies and has even dedicated his last novel to Adams.  Perhaps it's true, but I'm skeptical.

Does this help clarify it for you?  Richard Dawkins and Douglas Adams were good friends.  Douglas Adams introduced Dawkins to his wife, they worked together.  If this pseudo-eulogy for a lost friend doesn't convince you, I guess nothing will

It's sad, really.  I didn't believe it until I read that last sentence of your post.  XiaoucheEleventy was right.  That's exactly what "they" WANT you to believe

[jbox]

anyone like terry pratchett, when i first read his stuff i thought he was a poor mans adams but the more i read of his the more i really like him.

Pratchett is one of the only authors I actually "collect". But to be fair, Pratchett writes political satire, while Douglas Adams wrote existential satire. 

[polaris]

anyone like terry pratchett, when i first read his stuff i thought he was a poor mans adams but the more i read of his the more i really like him.

Pratchett is one of the only authors I actually "collect". But to be fair, Pratchett writes political satire, while Douglas Adams wrote existential satire. 

me no clever like that, i had a friend explain me the significance of the symbolism in asterix 'books' recently, in thirty years of reading them i never saw any of it  but i see what your saying now you've said it. i think above all i love the 'completeness' of the worlds pratchett creates, and the silliness, just what i liked with adams i s'pose.

[boykster]

Needless to say, I'm a fan of DNA's work.  My most prized book is a signed first print of "Mostly Harmless" that he signed during his US book tour for that books release.  I can't claim to have known him, any more than I "knew" him through his body of work, but I did have the honor of meeting him ever so briefly the day he signed the book for me.

Shortly after his death, I recounted my brief encounter with him for some fellow grieving fans in a thread over at floor42 dedicated to his memory:

http://floor42.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=979#979

[cdbrown]

I'm on Jouster's side and don't do books either - unless it's a comic.  I had pretty much gone 30 years without reading a book from cover to cover, but then a friend bought me a book so I felt I should read it.  I do enough reading at work which isn't enjoyable.  Plus I read the news and webstuff so that's enough for me.

I had to search for Douglas Adams as I've never heard of him either.  I'd heard of the hhgttg (or whatever the abbreviation is) only through people quoting it and then explaining to me what it's from after seeing the blank look I gave.  Never even picked up a copy of the book to read.  Have seen that the movie is being shown regularly on tv but haven't watched that either.

As for audio books, when am I expected to listen to that?  I'd rather watch tv, go outside, play games than read so I'm not going to sit there staring at the wall while listening to someone read a book to me.   

[boykster]

I'm on Jouster's side and don't do books either - unless it's a comic.  I had pretty much gone 30 years without reading a book from cover to cover, but then a friend bought me a book so I felt I should read it.  I do enough reading at work which isn't enjoyable.  Plus I read the news and webstuff so that's enough for me.

I had to search for Douglas Adams as I've never heard of him either.  I'd heard of the hhgttg (or whatever the abbreviation is) only through people quoting it and then explaining to me what it's from after seeing the blank look I gave.  Never even picked up a copy of the book to read.  Have seen that the movie is being shown regularly on tv but haven't watched that either.

As for audio books, when am I expected to listen to that?  I'd rather watch tv, go outside, play games than read so I'm not going to sit there staring at the wall while listening to someone read a book to me.   

Do you "do" movies?

check out Idiocracy...right up your alley for you guys that "don't do books"

 

[Jouster]

Do you "do" movies?

check out Idiocracy...right up your alley for you guys that "don't do books"

 

How so?  Because I...er...we have too much other stuff to do, whether it be business or fun, to read...we are unintelligent?  I'll put my IQ up there against anyone else's...I read plenty on-line and industry related.  But I don't enjoy reading books.  Probably never will.

Reading a book only engages my sense of sight...to read the lines...nothing else.  Given that...my mind will wander in about 2.6 pages.  A movie on the other hand engages hearing & sight and unless it is a bad chick flick or foreign film, will hold my attention for the entire movie...and spawn hours of imaginative thought following the movie.  That's something that books almost never do for me.

Jouster

[billf]

Reading a book only engages my sense of sight...to read the lines...nothing else.  Given that...my mind will wander in about 2.6 pages.  A movie on the other hand engages hearing & sight
Jouster

Maybe you should try reading aloud to yourself.   

[Havok]

Reading a book only engages my sense of sight...to read the lines...nothing else.  Given that...my mind will wander in about 2.6 pages.  A movie on the other hand engages hearing & sight and unless it is a bad chick flick or foreign film, will hold my attention for the entire movie...and spawn hours of imaginative thought following the movie.  That's something that books almost never do for me.

Jouster

Wow - that blows my mind, if that is your experience when reading. I read probably about 4 - 5 books a month. (I've slowed down now that I have kids, working on updating my MCSE and distance learning)

When I read, the story develops in mind, I imagine the scene, the characters, how they, speak what they look like, how they react, etc. I create the entire story from what I read. On the other hand, a movie has all that, but doesn't engage me in quite the same way: it's all force-fed to me, no imagination required, just watch.

I believe there have been studies on this, and people's brain activity has been shown to be markedly less when just watching a show, as opposed to reading...

[Chris G]

How so?  Because I...er...we have too much other stuff to do, whether it be business or fun, to read...we are unintelligent?  I'll put my IQ up there against anyone else's...I read plenty on-line and industry related.  But I don't enjoy reading books.  Probably never will.

Reading a book only engages my sense of sight...to read the lines...nothing else.  Given that...my mind will wander in about 2.6 pages.  A movie on the other hand engages hearing & sight and unless it is a bad chick flick or foreign film, will hold my attention for the entire movie...and spawn hours of imaginative thought following the movie.  That's something that books almost never do for me.

Jouster

It doesn't say you're unintelligent, it just means you're closing yourself off to a great medium for entertainment and avenue for broadening your mind and life experience.  Like Havoc said, it's more than just your sense of sight that's engaged - it's your brain and your imagination.  Movies and television are great for that too, just in a different way.  If you truly have ADD, then maybe this just isn't possible for you - and you're certainly entitled to simply not enjoy reading.  But I think you're really missing out on something, partner...

[Havok]

I believe there have been studies on this, and people's brain activity has been shown to be markedly less when just watching a show, as opposed to reading...

No citation = speculation

Don't pass off your personal bias as scientific fact unless you can back it up with peer reviewed research.

No bias - I did "read" about it...

 

"Psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland found that after just 30 seconds of watching television the brain begins to produce alpha waves, which indicates torpid (almost comatose) [slow] rates of activity. Alpha brain waves are associated with unfocused, overly receptive states of consciousness. A high frequency alpha waves does not occur normally when the eyes are open. In fact, Mulholland’s research implies that watching television is neurologically analogous to staring at a blank wall."

I am making an assumption here, but I would think that the results would be the same whether it is television, or a movie screen...