Hitchhiking through the Galaxy

If you’re not a nerd, you probably don’t appreciate the significance of this day.  Today is the release of the long-awaited movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

I had to go all the way to Norway (well, figuratively, not literally) to Espen Andersen’s Applied Abstractions to find this really great blog note offering a link to the video of a presentation by Douglas Adams at the University of California at Santa Barbara on "Parrots, the Universe and Everything". It is a real treat.  A couple of Espen’s observations that hit home in particular:

I thought the most interesting idea, however, was his point that science is changing – that we no longer (at least not to the same degree) take things apart to understand them but instead put them together so that we can watch them interact.

And:

Nice quote: "We don’t need to save the world. The world is fine. It has been through at least five periods of massive extinction before. [..] The world is big enough to look after itself." Though he is less specific on what to do about saving the world for human habitation.

Douglas unfortunately died four years ago, at the untimely age of 49, so he did not live to see the long-awaited movie project come to fruition.  For nerds around the world, though, his death left another powerful message – he died while exercising at a gym.  Maybe exercise really isn’t all that good for you, after all . . .