Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Towel Day


Today is Towel Day

1 ex-colleague, senior,... had once commented.
There exists God iff God is equivalent to DNA.
Where DNA stands for Douglas Noël Adams

I was floored the 1st time i read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or H2G2 as it is generally referred.
And then i read the Dirk Gently series.
I am not competent enough to comment on His writing skills but would warn you that you require a minimum amount of intelligence to even comprehend what He is writing. Also rarely has anyone (i know who has read His writings) been able to figure out what He is writing, on the 1st read.

His writing had intrigued me find out more about Him.
I am really proud of the ingenious techniques He had used as an environmental activist. His action of wearing a rhino suit & scaling Mount Kilimanjaro for Save the Rhino organization immediately endeared Him to me.
He was a serious fan of technology & had understood the amount technology would effect future. Perhaps that is why He was so closely associated with Mac & had taken personal interest in the interactive fiction of H2G2.

My favourite quote of his: I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Another one: Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
Another: You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
Another: To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.
Another: The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
Another: The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

I can go on since i believe most of His lines are quotable

He has given us the answer to the ultimate question. It is 42. It is upto us to figure out what the ultimate question is... but the ans is 42.

He died of a heart attack at the age of 49 on 11 May 2001. A really sad day.
The biologist Richard Dawkins (dedicated his book, The God Delusion, to Adams) expressed the sentiment pretty well by writing "[s]cience has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender."

Friends, readers, fellow mortals... join me today to pay homage to a great human being. Please carry along your towel.

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