View Single Post
Old 05-09-2008, 12:07 AM   #267 (permalink)
Who am I
Senior Member
 
Who am I's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 1,275
Blog Entries: 1
Rep Power: 2 Who am I is on a distinguished road
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Whirlwind View Post
42 is the age at which a guy starts to realize that he's running out of time to do all of those wonderful things that he imagined doing when he was a youngster. Learning to rollerblade, getting an earring, gaining muscle, etc. He begins to realize that...no, he is not invincible, no matter what he thought when he was 20.

Am I right?

Well I’ll be darned. You were real close.
I actually found an answer when I googled it. I was only half expecting it. I don’t know if this is the right one, but it’s rather interesting. (even though I don‘t understand it all)


In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the number from which all meaning ("the meaning of life, the universe, and everything") could be derived.
A BBC radio script based on Adams' book contains the following lines:
("Cave man" lays out following sentence in Scrabble stones: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?")
Arthur: Six by nine? Forty-two? You know, I've always felt that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Universe.
(Faint and distant voice) Base thirteen!
For the literal-minded and those unfamiliar with terms like "base thirteen," this is a number system in which the number 10 is equivalent to our more familiar decimal 13. A base-13 number 42, therefore, is the same as four 13s plus 2, or decimal 54. So "six by nine" (six times nine) or decimal 54 is, in base 13, 42. For the mystically inclined, 42 in base 13 is the same as 110110 in binary (base 2). This could mean almost anything, and many Adams fans have spent untold hours discovering all of the places where the number "42" pops up. For example, there are many mentions of the number in the Book of Revelation. Others have made a game of finding 42s, such as these:
The angle at which light reflects off of water to create a rainbow is 42 degrees.
Two physical constants in the universe are the speed of light and thediameter of a proton. It takes light 10 to the minus 42nd power seconds to cross the diameter of a proton.
The sum of the ordinal alphabetic positions of the initials (SPG) for Stan (P.) Gibilisco, an oft-published science and technology writer, is equal to 42 (S=19, P=16, G=7).
A barrel holds 42 gallons.
(It should be noted that all of these 42s are base 10, not base 13.)
http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci211501,00.html




If a tree were to fall on your car/truck, and no one was around to hear, would you make a sound?
And what would that sound be?
__________________
Blessings to all

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD,
thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Who am I is offline   Reply With Quote