is an excellent book by Douglas Adams (isbn 978-0-330-49119-8).
As usual
I'm going to quote from a few pages.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable
end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small
unregarded yellow sun.
The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan
Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can
expect to pay for one and what voluntary organizations
exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards.
People of Earth, your attention please.
This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace
Planning Council...
The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in
your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any
form of language.
The prisoners sat in the Poetry Appreciation chars - strapped in.
'Space', it says, 'is big. Really big. You just won't believe how
vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's
a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to
space. Listen...' and so on.
The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability
by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57
Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong
Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of
course well understood.
Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you
down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? Cos I don't.
For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons
and turning dials; then as technology became more sophisticated
the controls were made touch sensitive - you merely had to brush
the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your
hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved
a lot muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit
infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same
programme.
'Oh God,' said Zaphod. He hadn't worked with this computer for
long but had already learned to loathe it.
'Computer!' shouted Zaphod. 'Rotate angle of vision through
one-eighty degrees and don't talk about it!'
Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly
natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was
really poor - at least no one worth speaking of.
'Hi there! This is Eddie your shipboard computer, and I'm feeling
just great, guys, and I know I'm just going to get a bundle of kicks
out of any program you care to run through me.'
'You just let the machines get on with the adding up,' warned
Majikthise, 'and we'll take care of the eternal verities, thank you very much.
You want to check your legal position you do, mate. Under the law the
Quest for the Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative
of your working thinkers.'
'I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've
never actually known what the question is.'
R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel
that is consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than
say five minutes late.
