I've recently hosted a nice quaint anniversary dinner for friends, and one of the gifts I received was the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One of the concepts introduced here is the
Bistromathic drive, which basically is a fictive engine technology that bases itself on irrational mathematics during dinners. Why irrational? Try to calculate, predict or otherwise know beforehand:
- How many guests arrive at which moment
- The number of guests joining dinner
- The amount of cash actually paid for the bill
All points apply for this dinner. A completely random number of guests arrived at the designated time. Some arrived earlier, others later. The number of chairs I reserved at the restaurant was incorrect at the moment of reservation. That I knew. But what I didn't expect was that that number even changed about ten times in the last three hours before dinner. Finally the actual money amount for this dinner was completely fluid, despite having pre-selected a number of dishes.
Apparently trying to accurately predict all these numbers requires an intellect that far exceeds that of people like Einstein, Bohr, Hawking. It requires the calculating power of a computer so great, that according to the Hitchhiker's Guide it can propel a starship across the universe in no time at all.
Or you could just relax, sit back and enjoy the dinner. Just like these people: