Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill
Random geekery from the Low Countries
Today is the 25th May, which is Towel Day, an annual celebration of the works of Douglas Adams.
As such, now is the time of the year at which I grab a towel and remind you all that…
It’s a tough universe. There’s all sorts of people and things trying to do you, kill you, rip you off, everything. If you’re going to survive out there, you’ve really got to know where your towel is.
Stay hoopy, froods.
It’s a tough universe. There’s all sorts of people and things trying to do you, kill you, rip you off, everything. If you’re going to survive out there, you’ve really got to know where your towel is.
Today is Towel Day, an annual celebration of the life and work of Douglas Adams and (especially) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy started out as a radio series and was first transmitted in 1978. That makes today’s Towel Day, 42 years later, rather special.
Precious Little Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a prequel to the magical novella Made Things, which has just been published. It’s so good that I now have the novella.
Chris Grey asks what ‘getting Brexit done‘ actually means. There are some nasty surprises in store for anyone who thinks that Britain leaving the UK in January will be the end of it.
Robert McCrum remembers Clive James, who died last week.
Jennie Rigg points to what the phrase ‘poisoning of political discourse‘ means for real people.
And finally, here’s Wumo on Black Friday:
“T. K. hates a lot of things, but at the moment, it’s how she becomes the #1 target during dodgeball at gym. Everything changes, however, when she discovers that she has the ace ability to direct spherical objects — and she makes her classmates pay! But her powers are made for more than petty revenge, as she soon discovers while on a family vacation.” How to Move Spheres and Influence People is a short story set in the Wild Cards universe.
In Arctic Siberia, Russian scientists are trying to stave off catastrophic climate change by resurrecting an Ice Age biome complete with lab-grown woolly mammoths. Welcome to Pleistocene Park.
“The space between fiction and reality is where economic bubbles take shape.” Brent Goldfarb and David A Kirsch explore The economics of bubbles.
Going back a few months, Salman Rushdie discusses what Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five tells us now.
And finally, Antergos Linux is dead, long live EndeavourOS. Antergos was my main operating system for several years — I keep meaning to take a look at how well EndeavourOS has picked up the baton of being a newcomer friendly introduction to the occasionally painful world of Arch-based distributions.
Because the world needs more Bill Hicks
Singer Roger Waters immortalised in Brussels South station
The lead singer of the British rock group Pink Floyd will get his own mural in Brussels South station, Bruzz reports. The Liège artist Noir Artist was commissioned to make the wall painting of Waters at the Place Horta entrance.
This is where I attempt to make an obvious pun about the obvious album.
It’s 35 years ago that the legendary Pimania was released by Automata and Alan Bilton has published a nostalgia inducing history of the game, the company and the creators.
I remember being caught up in the hype back in the mid-80s. Not only did I buy and failed to complete the (Dragon 32 version) of the game, but I also bought the music cassette. And if memory serves correctly, there was also a comic strip in one of the magazines that I was reading at the time.
Enjoy
By its very definition, satire is concerned not with identity or social standing, but behavior. Specifically, satire is a literary device designed to expose and mock human vice and folly. Accordingly, it is not satirists’ job to ensure the behavior being attacked is being perpetrated only by the highest members of society. Instead, satirists expose and explain all of humanity’s failings with humor.
Gladstone on The Limitations of Punching Up
Happy Towel Day.
Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour.
I know where my towel is. Do you?
Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams . On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour.
Only seven days to go.
Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill 