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"In WWII, they had a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think the modern equivalent of that is that there are no jaded, bored people in the high-tech industry, in the land of really good hardcore geeks."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Towel | ||
| A simple scrap of cloth with surprisingly many uses. |
Towels are a very important part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; mostly because they are "the most massively useful" thing you can have while hitchhiking the Galaxy. Towels figured prominently in the autograph session I went to at my local book store; I only had my copy of the book, but others had brought towels and indelible marker pens.
| A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta…wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat…wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes…any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it … win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. |
| Technovelgy from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
by Douglas Adams. Published by Harmony Books in 1979 Additional resources -
|
Can you believe it - the paper towel was introduced by Scott Paper in 1907. Douglas Adams, were he alive today, would I'm sure eschew flimsy disposable towels for the massively useful fabric variety.
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
