The story behind the Story

Now it can be told (as soon as we figure it out).
Where exactly is Macias Nguema Biyogo (see photo)? Where is Ma´tan Bishãrah? Poti, Gruzinskaja?
What is a Badonan? What lay beneath the ground on which they were standing? What were the forty-two round metal objects? What was the “strange and nearly forgotten tongue”? Why does Eschatology recapitulate itself?
Check it out. Go to “Questions Asked” on this blog or Vade Mecum on the Space Forum.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Milliways, better known as The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is a dining establishment that has been said to be the best thing since sliced bread, and in fact even serves sliced bread at your request.

It involves both:

Seeing one Edge of the Universe, and Seeing the End of the Universe

The name Milliways apparently refers to either:

The million ways the Universe could end, or

The thousandth of a way the Universe could end.

Its sister project is the Restaurant at the Beginning of the Universe, called Manyways.

Conventional methods
Reaching the spatial End of the Universe is rather simple. The restaurant is built on the former location of the planet Magrathea (which was built on the future location of Frogstar World B), and one can reach it using any variety of spacecraft available, including those that use Infinite Improbability Drive, Bistromathics, or Hyperspace. Actual travel time may vary, depending on the space, time, and dimension of origin.

Alternate method
You just, well, wait for about 42 billion years. The Big Crunch will be imminent by then, and the size of the Universe will have been greatly reduced, making it easier to reach the spatial End of the Universe.

This, of course, is what is mainly done by many immortals.

However, since many people are mortals, they just utilize time travel and high speed spacecraft.

Questions asked, unasked and not yet answered

SPACE is not only big, it’s also mysterious. There exists within SPACE an ancient Mystery. At this Time, we do not comprehend the full extent of the Mystery. Eschatology recapitulates the Mystery, but it’s bigger than just that. There are clues in the Story, but the Mystery cannot be solved without the missing clues.

That’s why we create a set of clues known as toneoats. Some of them are allegorical; others are literally true; the rest are ersatz nonsequiturs. Over Time, they evolve, both in terms of what they say and in their ability to facilitate TimeMagic. By this process, we unravel the mystery as we create it.

Look everywhere for SPACE clues, potential toneoats. As you read, watch TV, surf the Net, interact with people, look for SPACE clues. As you live Life, contemplate the Universe, and experience Everything, look for clues, potential toneoats. Send, Post Any Clues, Eschatological insights, outasights, ideas, factoids or connections you happen upon. Even if you don’t see how it fits, some other Spacenique may find some other faction or connectoid that meshes perfectly with it, so we’ll be able to decode the answer when it appears. Here are few questions that need clues....

1) What is the “underground mechanism [that] had been working on the problem for a long time”?

2) What “lay beneath the ground on which they were standing”?

3) What SPACE insights are encrypted on the Phaestos Disk?

4) What is special or unusual about June 21, 1974 (history, astrology,numerology, whatever), date of the First Festival and first modernquartertoss?

5) What about Minoan civilization relates to the Story or SPACE?

There are many many other questions, so few answers and more questions yet unasked. Sign up and join into the discussion on the Space Forum.

Hubble Telescope Photos

Click here for Gallery Pictures
Capture the extraordinary. Explore the universe through Hubble's eye, and witness the most dangerous, spectacular and mysterious depths of the cosmos.

Click here for Hubble Videos

Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why?

Who is Eieio? What's his story? Was he a real cyclops or just a very big man who lost an eye?

What of Lilith? Sorceress? Adept? High Priestess?

And Gern, the Wanderer? Did he always wander or was that something he took up later in life? If so, what was his life before he became a wanderer?

How were the 42 round objects (that are not coins)found? What were the round objects? Why were they left in the garden mist? What happened to them after being left in the garden mist?

It occured to me, a compendium of some sort, would be a good format to answer these and other questions. For lack of a better term, a "SPACEipedia" - where we would all contribute our thoughts and explainations regarding the elements of SPACE.

so long and thanks for all the fish

Einstein, Relativity and the Space-time Continuum

According to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, matter bends the fabric of space and time. The distortion of the space-time continuum even affects the behavior of light.

Almost looks like the SPACE logo... very interesting......

In order to sidestep the issue of Newton's Third Law of Motion and the impossibility of matter traveling faster than the speed of light, we can look to Einstein and the relationship between space and time. Taken together, space, consisting of three dimensions (up-down, left-right, and forward-backward) and time are all part of what's called the space-time continuum.

It's important to understand Einstein's work on the space-time continuum and how it relates to the Enterprise traveling through space. In his Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein states two postulates:

1. The speed of light (about 300,000,000 meters per second) is the same for all observers, whether or not they're moving.

2. Anyone moving at a constant speed should observe the same physical laws.

Putting these two ideas together, Einstein realized that space and time are relative -- an object in motion actually experiences time at a slower rate than one at rest. Although this may seem absurd to us, we travel incredibly slow when compared to the speed of light, so we don't notice the hands on our watches ticking slower when we're running or traveling on an airplane. Scientists have actually proved this phenomenon by sending atomic clocks up with high-speed rocket ships. They returned to Earth slightly behind the clocks on the ground.

Quick Spacefest Clip 2009

WOOT! The Story has been sent back.

We just returned home from a wonderful spacefest. A few spaceniques are still there.

Will post some pics during the week when I get them downloaded.

Meanwhile - Spacegear for the 2009 Spacefest will remain available until we get ready to put put the 2010 Spacefest gear sometime next year.

We did some brainstorming regarding life, the universe and everything. Keep checking back to get some details.

IT'S SPACEFEST!

It's SPACEFEST- where it a connects!

Albert Einstein and Douglas Adams

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the resta kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. --Albert Einstein



Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time 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. --Douglas Adams



Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. --Albert Einstein


Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines 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. --Douglas Adams


What is inconceivable about the universe, is that it should be at all conceivable. --Albert Einstein


From the late Einstein we are getting more and more refinements to our picture of how time and space work at a macroscopic level, and from the late Heisenberg and Planck we are increasing our understanding of the fundamental structures of matter at a quantum level. And there is absolutely no doubt that this information is edging us closer and closer toward the elusive goal of a Grand Unified Field Theory of Everything. --Douglas Adams

The Uncyclopedia

“In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the western hemisphere of the planet earth, uncyclopedia has already supplanted wikipedia as the standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omission and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it contains 1 zero wing reference every 3 words; and second, it has the wisdom of Oscar Wilde inscribed at the top of every article. ”

~ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Uncyclopedia “I got beaten to it, but I don't really mind... bloody good book...” ~ Oscar Wilde

“The history of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is now so complicated that every time I tell it I contradict myself, and whenever I do get it right I'm misquoted. So the publication of this omnibus edition seemed like a good opportunity to set the record straight--or at least firmly crooked.” ~ Douglas Adams

Big Meadows WEBCAM

For those not attending Spacefest, but wish to peek in on us - here's the link to the Big Meadows webcam

We will be gathering in the Big Meadow on Saturday 6/20

Weather Forecast

Thursday 6/18
Chance Of T-Storm
High 71 deg F
Low 59 deg F
Cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 70s. South winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent. Overnight: mostly cloudy with scattered showers. Lows in the upper 50s. South winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 40percent.

Friday 6/19
Chance Of T-Storm
High 81 deg F
Low 65 deg F
Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 80s. Southwest winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent. Overnight: mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of showers. Lows in the mid 60s. Southwest winds around 5 mph.

Saturnday 6/20
Chance Of T-Storm
High 81 deg F
Low 60 deg F
Cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 80s. Southwest winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent. Overnight: mostly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of showers. Lows around 60. Southwest winds around 5 mph.

Sunday 6/21
Chance Of T-Storm
High 79 deg F
Low 60 deg F
Partly sunny with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 70s. West winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 30 percent.

Pocupine Ponderance Points - Douglas Adams

"Anything that happens happens, anything that in happening causes something else to happen causes something else to happen, and anything that in happening causes itself to happen again, happens again. Although not necessarily in chronological order."

"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. "

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. "

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

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. "

"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. "

"We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem. "

Time Window

A very short TIME WINDOW remains open to get your SPACE GEAR.

Space Gear will be available year round - but if you want it for SPACEFEST 2009 - ORDER NOW!

Shipping Method
Economy* 7-9 business days $5.25
Standard 4-6 business days $7.00
Premium 3-4 business days $13.00
1 Day ** Next day if order by noon $21.00

In January 2010 - we will ask Spaceniques to submit their design ideas for the 2010 Spacegear.

Submissions and voting on the designs will take place in the SPACE Connections Forum

Check it out, and sign up. Registration is easy and quick. It's THE place where it all connects in space.

Proposed Itinerary*:

Friday, 6/19: Potluck dinner at a campground site (time to be determined)

Blackrock Sunset Viewing

Hang out

Saturnday, 6/20 about 1 pm: Big Meadow. Hang out , read the Story, toss quarters, hang out.

Make dinner plans.

Blackrock Sunset Viewing

Meet for TimeScan®

Sunday, 6/21: 9 am?: Breakfast at the lodge

*Itinerary subject to change due to weather conditions and/or anomalies occuring in the Time-Space Continuum

Thursdays

Douglas Adams on Thursdays:

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story.

...................

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun, and the galaxy is a very strange and startling place.

The story begins with a house. Not a remarkable house, by any means. The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in.

At 8:00 on Thursday morning, Arthur woke up blearily, got up, put on his bathrobe, wandered round his room, opened a window, saw several big yellow bulldozers, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash. He drank a large glass of water.

................

"This must be Thursday," said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

Listening to the Story - SF year 2012

just a reminder

In addition to this blog

We also have a SPACE CONNECTIONS FORUM
Quick and easy registration. Check it out! Stay connected with other Spaceniques.

Don't forget to order your SPACE GEAR.
Shipping takes about 5-7 days . We have a variety of T-shirts in different styles and colors, sweatshirts, hoodies, hats, and water bottles. Men-Women-Kid sizes available!

Big Meadow Flowers

Coin Toss 2007

The Deja Vu Efffect

Déjà vu "already seen"; also called paramnesia, or promnesia, is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the near past), although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher, Emile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book "L'Avenir des sciences psychiques" ("The Future of Psychic Sciences"), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness," "strangeness," or "weirdness." The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past.

The deja vu phenomenom has been attributed to links to a disorder such as temporal lobe epilepsy, or schizophrenia. Certain phameceuticals may bring about the deja vu effect. Some people point to Parapsychological abilities like clarivoyance, or dreams or reincarnation as the source for deja vu. While these may bring about the deja vu effect, the Temporal Bubble theory hasn't been researched to any great extent.

A Temporal Bubble is a floating bubble of time. It bounces and floats independent of "normal time". Depending on the float direction, and the size - a temporal bubble is capable of speeding up or slowing down "normal time" for people passing through the bubble.

We've all had those days where time just seems to drag, or all of a sudden you look up and exclaim "WOW! Where did the time go?". In this example, you've been encased in a temporal bubble. Once the bubble has passed, time returns to normal.

With deja vu, the temporal bubble hasn't encased you, nor have you passed through the bubble, rather you have "bumped" into the bubble. It's similar to bumping into a telephone pole and knocking you back on your butt - except it doesn't hurt nor give your friends a reason to chuckle.

The size of the temporal bubble is small and therefore it usually just effects one person, although there are anecdotal stories of two or more people bumping into the same bubble at the same time. The impact physically sends you back in time for a few seconds. You are bounced out of "normal time".


And reemerge a few seconds previous to the time of impact. You experience a deja vu "feeling" as opposed to a "memory" because the force of the impact and bouncing back in time has caused a perceptiual disorientation.

SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM

To put it in very simple terms, the space-time continuum is our universe. When most people think of dimensions, they only think in terms of spacial dimensions (up-down, right-left, forward-backward). These are the dimensions through which we have a certain limited amount of control over our movement. However, there is another dimension through which we have no control of our movement, time. Excluding relativistic effects, time just keeps moving forward. We can't slow, stop, or reverse it, but it is something with which we must deal.

Whenever we describe an object's place in the universe, there is a time factor involved as well as a spacial location. For example, if I give some one my address, that assumes that I am living at that address right now. It's not the same address at which I was living just a year ago. So, space and time are both parts of our universe. However, since most people tend not to think about time in this context, the term space-time continuum was coined as a means of emphasizing times importance.

Some theories propose that multiple planes exist, with each plane having it's own continuum. The multiple plane theory is split into three main theories.

1. Parallel Universalists: Each plane of existence is separate from the other, and runs parallel to all other planes. Time and space are self-contained to each plane. There are an infinite number of Parallel Planes. Since parallel lines do not meet, and each has it's own time-space continuum it's impossible to move from one plane to another.



2. Universal Wheelers: Space exists on an infinite number of planes, but Time surrounds all. Each plane revolves around a central axis and out in all directions - not only on in an X-Y direction, but also in A,B,C....Z... ad infinitum....

To simplfy things - think of a wagon wheel with a central "hub". The hub is the point of space (or planes) convergence. The spokes are each plane. The rim is time, which encompasses all. If you were to journey to the HUB, it's theorized, you would exist in all planes at all times simultaneously. Or to put it another way - you would be everywhere at everywhen.

Dopplegangers are said to be anecdotal evidence of people entering and passing through the hub. If you have ever seen yourself passing you on the street - it could just be a mistake in perception, or it could be another "you" from another plane passing through the Hub on the way to the pub.


3. Wigglies: Although not an entirely separate theory from the previous mentioned two theories - Wigglies see each plane not as straight rigid lines, but rather as wiggly lines undulating through their own time.

Sometimes these wiggly planes "bump" into each other and temporarily merge. Debate still rages whether the wiggly bumps create wormholes or do they create temporary rifts?

Be they rifts or wormholes - they do allow passage from one plane to another. If you were to pass through such a hole, you would enter another plane. However, if you could detect the hole, but not enter it, it's theorized you would be able to "time scan" other planes as an observer.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Don't Panic

14 days til SPACEFEST

Tick Tock... Time is running out to order your SPACE GEAR! Order Today!

What could be better than a Space Stein for your Space beverage?

Ohhh, baby - it's cold outside. Stay warm with a SPACE HOODIE.

John Lennon with Space poster ----- June 21, 1967

Pablo Fanque's Circuit Royal

Click image for full-scale view.

S.P.A.C.E....

Enclosed herewith for your Delectation and Appreciation is a lithograph "a friend" recently procured for me at a certain bawdyhouse where it languished barely noticed on the dingy wall of some squalid upstairs accomodation. Legend has it that this fell through some kind of "time warp" (?) from the distant past ... or was it the distant future? O well, "my friend" informs me that they tell many Tall Tales at that House of disputable repute.

Please present said enclosed Work of Art, with my compliments and Best Wishes, to dearest Mr. Kite, and do convey my "regrets" for not doing so personally.

Very truly yours, your obt. svt.
J-daddy O'douga

Time Traveling

One of the major problems encountered with time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother.

There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well adjusted family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history - the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw.

All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.
---Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Penultimate Questions

What was Jackie Robinson's Baseball Jersey number?

The cover of the original UK paperback edition of the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyIn The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (published in 1979), the characters visit the legendary planet Magrathea, home to the now-collapsed planet-building industry, and meet Slartibartfast, a planetary coastline designer who was responsible for the fjords of Norway.


Through archival recordings, he relates the story of a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built a computer named Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

When the answer was revealed to be 42, Deep Thought had predicted that another computer, more powerful than itself would be made and designed by it to calculate the question for the answer. (Later on, referencing this, Adams would create the 42 Puzzle, a puzzle which could be approached in multiple ways, all yielding the answer 42.)

Here is the answer. What are the 42 questions?

2 Hints:
a) "How many questions are there in the 42 Puzzle?"
b) See blog entry title




FACTOIDS:

-- There are 42 eggs in 3 1/2 dozen of Eggs.

-- The President of the United States, between "the bushes" was #42.

-- People born in 1942, were 42 in 1984, leading some to speculate a time-space relationship between Douglas Adams and George Orwell.

-- There are no Wikipedia entries for the date April 2, 1942 (4/2/42)

Duck?

"Even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. 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." -- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency