G'day
That's easy:-
"You'll need to have this fish in your ear."
"I beg your pardon?" asked Arthur.
Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a small
yellow fish wriggling around in it...He gasped in terror at what sounded
like a man trying to gargle while fighting off a pack of wolves.
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest
thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from
its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious
mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It
then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by
combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up
from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The
practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your
ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of
language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave
matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
The above is from my favourite book called:
"The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe". A wonderful book that is full
of very sideways view of looking at the world. The earth is about to be
destroyed to make way for a new hyperspace highway. What wasn't known
was that zillions of years beforehand someone asked the ultimate
question, the answer to which was "42". The question had long been
forgotten so a new super computer was built called - EARTH.
It's a fantastic book and I would recommend it to anyone who sees life
in a slightly slanted way. Subsequent books in the Hitchhikers trilogy
are "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", "Life, the Universe and
Everything" and "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish". Yes I know that's
4, but that's part of it. In these books we find out the true rulers of
the earth - white mice and dolphins.
Hoo Roo
Patrick Quinn
Sydney, Australia
________________________________
From: insptwo@msn.com [mailto:insptwo@msn.com]
Sent: Friday, 3 October 2008 1:13 PM
To: Quinn, Patrick; Jody Kerr; Tracy Drummond
Cc: HealeyMail List
Subject: RE: [Healeys] (no subject)
Okay Patrick:
I give up! Would you kindly explain what a "Bablefish" is. Here in
southern Florida, I have not come across that word so I am in limbo as
to what you are referring to.
Regards:
Bill
BJ7
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