Talk:Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything/Archive 2

message: What if the page just says "42" and then there's a link or a redirect to another article explaining it? Too me, that kind of simplistic understatement would seem more in line with the joke's original context.
:It might fit the joke, but it's not encyclopedic. --JohnDBuell 18:16, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Change in Layout

message: What is the big deal with leaving a math markup at the end of the document to explain the C code that preceeds it? Have we declared war on math markup suddenly? --JohnDBuell 18:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Math markup

message: Ok, now that I've remembered my password: I've fought for "Where does it all end?" for a few years now, so I've re-added it.  Please think it through before deleting.  Virtually anything can be tied to 42, and while "Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish" is most certainly Douglas Adams' bible-code style cryptographic reference to the upcoming sequal to Ford Fairlane starring Leonard Nimoy and Pauly Shore, I'd hesitate to think that even he could fail to see the connection between the very last use of the number in the entire series and the only question a cynic need ever ask. Michaelmovies 22:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Final Countdown

message: The whole series may be a joke - that would fit pretty well with the whole thing. It is possible that Adams gave a stupid answer with no question, just to, as it where, piss us off.  The point of the series may be that it is impossible to know the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything, because, after you do, the universe (Or your universe, as Arthur discovered in Life, the Universe and Everything; like Descartes, the universe is only what you make of it) is destroyed, which is why the planed Earth was destroyed all those times.
:Nah, it's ultimately the former. Im a bell(Don't ask) 23:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Answer is Impossible 

message: The United States has had 42 Presidents under the Federal Constitution.
Also, combined, the ancient Israelite Kingdoms had 42 kings.
Does this mean the end of time is upon us?
Food for thought.
Josh-Levin@ieee.org 22:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kings and Presidents 

message: More food for this thought: there were 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus (Matthew ch 1). Also, in Revelation 12, the woman who, after gave birth to the child which was taken up to heaven, fled to the wilderness for 1260 days (42 months), and the beast which came out of the sea (Revelation 13) made war with the Christians 42 months.
Spidermonkey03 23:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More 42 in the Bible

message: I think it would be worth noting that when one searches "the answer to life the universe and everything" in Google, the Google Calculator gives you the answer of "42." Try it for yourself. REscano 17:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Aside from the fact that this is already in the article The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_cultural_references#42, if you do this you'll notice that the wikipedia article is 42 kilobytes. --TIB (talk) 17:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 43 kb now, that sucks :/, Someone should take something out. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.177.14.93 (talk) 03:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Google Calculator

message: Hello,I do not even know who I am talking to,but here is the problem.It seems for a long time now that every time I look up I see this number.I swear I think there is an answer to my question,WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?WHAT DO I NEED TO BE LOOKING FOR?I have been seemingly haunted by this number for a long while.If this raises any kind of forum,please let me know. [e-mail address removed] .....thanks
* Try noticing some other similar numbers, like, say, 44 or 48. They'll show up just as often. You only notice 42 because you're already looking for it. Also remember that the Hitchhiker's Guide is humorous fiction, so don't expect it to reveal any deep truths about the universe. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ  03:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Only in Base 10. If you use base 12, it changes all the numerological items around.Slavlin 21:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Everywhere I go      "42" 

message: The very first time I read this book, I was ten or twelve years old.  I remember thinking that since the time of Earth's computation was nearing an end, the question as present in the subconscious mind of Arthur Dent was almost in its final form, requiring only computational precision to be fully accurate.  To me, that meant the question would actually have been, WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY SEVEN, with the answer being, of course, 42.
However, the implications of WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY SEVEN?  42. did not hit me until I pondered adding my voice to this auspicious cacophony.  You see, Adams' humor was very British; dry, intellectual, with a deep melancholy behind it.  If my speculation matches Douglas Adams' intent, it also matches the general theme of the book: that life is, at its heart, mundane, impersonal, and ultimately unsatisfying.
Yes, I did say mundane.  Despite multifarous alien species on millions of worlds, despite the wacky humor and multiple jaunts through space and time, the Hitchhiker books are about how everoyone in an accidental universe faces a lifetime of disappointment and disillusionment.
*Once Arthur Dent learned to understand the language of the birds, he realized it was all the most mundane kind of talk -- air velocity, location of food sources, etc.
*The immortality of reincarnation is marred, once a person realizes their life will end again and again and again, often in the most meaningless ways.
*The original planet of humans was depopulated through lack of telephone handset sanitizing.
*Even The Almighty apologized for screwing up.
*The Vogons win.
No wonder Marvin was depressed.
--BlueNight 05:20, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The question was incomplete 

message: no more vandalsism is present. every time i visit this page (6 times but who is counting) it has something with the words gangsta or ******. But not today. thank you wikipedianitewitchyourds.(I have no clue what you people are called)Fyvp 03:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  thank you 

message: Im not sure but i think it might be correct in base 13. Sultangris 02:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. That's well documented and irrelevant. --JohnDBuell 02:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  9 x 6= 42 

message: I am pretty sure there was an official explanation of 42 at one point (in a Douglas Adams webpage I think). Fourty-two, for-tee-two. The meaning of life is Tee-for-two. 
Does anyone know where this come from? Carewolf 09:15, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tea for two 

message: I've read the talk page, and most of it seems to be people complaining about the uselessness of the trivia to do with 42.
Firstly, I'd just like to say that the number 42 itself IS a piece of trivia.
You are on a web page devoted to the a fiction novel in which 42 is the ultimate answer.
Trivia is what people want to see when they come to this page, not a factual recount of how Douglas Adams SAYS he came up with the number.
IMO we should add a section on the end of the page devoted to useless trivia about the number 42, and theories about its origins. You see, Douglas was a human being, and therefore had the potential to lie. So IMO he may have got the number from somewhere and not told anybody about it.
Some useless trivia:
I also have recently been told by a friend that D. Adams = 42.
Also, 42 in binary is 101010.
I think the people of the world have a right to know that Douglas Adams may well have got the number from somewhere and lied about it later. Glooper—Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.184.203 (talk • contribs) 
:I don't think it's necessary to say that Douglas Adams was lying at all. If people insist on believing that Adams using 42 had a deeper significance, there is still a lot of room for the subconscious. I agree though, it might be interesting to have a section including all this trivia. Zorander22 23:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we can have random speculation about why the number 42 might be significant, or we can have real facts about how Douglas Adams never meant it to be significant at all. Guess which one belongs on a fan site and which one belongs in an encyclopedia. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ  08:27, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Useless trivia is what some people live on. 

message: In russian version of the article there is interesting joke, showing some danger of careless using of C, C++ and other languages sharing the same preprocessor.
Quite nice IMHO.
:This was removed, but I think it should go back in.QBasicer 05:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No. It's unattributable and doesn't add anything meaningful to the article. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ  08:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  NINE*SIX = 42 (programmers joke) 

message: I was pretty sure that it used to be mentioned that Marvin answered the question - his "Why?". It seems pretty obvious that he would have solved it, since even while with the Krikketmen he solved "every physiological, meteriological... [etc.]...problem, and wrote lullabies" - surely with "a brain the size of a planet", and a lifespan 37 times that of the universe, he would have had enough time and, if you can call it that, motivation to do so. The fact that he answers with "Why" seems to be a clear ringer. Plus, it would still fit with the tone of mediocrity and ennui.KrytenKoro 12:11, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why?