A Blog Around The Clock

Douglas Noel Adams was born at Cambridge, England on this day in 1952. After earning both bachelors and masters degrees there, he did some comedy acting and writing, including work with a couple of the Monty Python gang, and eventually wrote a radio series for BBC called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." It first became a TV series, then a book. Actually a trilogy, which means that there are three volumes, except that this one has five. It had some science fiction elements, there's a dash of philosophy, but it was comedy. Here's a sample:

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

Totally mad. Utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.

- All from Douglas Noel Adams, 1952 - 2001

From Quotes of the Day