Durante el ultimo viaje a Mexico, agarre uno de esos libros que uno tiene para viajar, este era «life, the universe and everything», de Douglas Adams, es el tercero de la serie de «the hitchhiker guide to the galaxy» , supongo que muchos de los jovenes lectores del blog no tienen ni idea de que les estoy hablando, pero si se quieren divertir un rato en el verano les recomiendo leerlo (eso si esten preparados para pasar al mundo de los absurdos).
Lo bueno de este libro que lleve, es que desorienta a la gente, con ese nombre, la gente creia que estaba leyendo tratados de filosofia, y los desorientaba cuando me reia en voz alta…
Aca va un capitulo clasico:
The Bistromathics Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast intersteller distances without all that dangerous mucking about with Improbability Factors. Bistromatics Itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behaviour of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that time was not an absolute but depended on the observer’s movement in space, and that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer’s movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer’s movement in restaurants.
The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.
The second nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of the most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words the given time of arrival is the one moment in time at which is impossible that any member of the party will arrive. Reciproverexclusons now play a vital part in many branches of math, including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Else’s Problem field.
The third and most mysterious piece of nonabsoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for.
……
Numbers written on restaurant checks within th econfines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe….
Pablo Brenner & Sergio Fogel Blog 
Primera vez que encuentro alguien en Uruguay que conoce a Douglas Adams… qué jugador!! Te recomiendo que agarres también los cuentos que escribió de Dirk Gently, la verdad que el sentido del humor británico es espectacular.
Me encanta la definición que da la Guía de volar… «There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.»
Impresionante 🙂
Al fin alguien que lee the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!! Me da gusto no ser el único latino que lee a Adams. Ya tienes la vida resuelta, ya puedes encontrar la respuesta a lo que quieras: 42.