The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - a reflection

For this course I decided to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy once more. I've read all of the five published books in the series and they are among my absolute favourites, but I only read the first one this time. The book is basicly a twisted science fiction story following a normal British man called Arthur Dent, which coincidently is friends with Ford Prefect, a writer for the company that publishes the guide. In the book, the guide is the ultimate encyclopedia of all things one would need to know about the universe. Arthur is of course not aware that Ford is an "alien", but he quickly realises that when Ford saves him from certain death when Earth is destroyed because a new space-highway needs to be built.
The thing that intrigued the most about the books, is the way that Douglas Adams (the writer) goes into excessive detail about seemingly pointless things just to amuse the reader. There is a part in the book where the main characters are on a spaceship that has a "improbability drive" and the ship is being chased by two thermal nuclear missiles. They engage the drive and the missiles turn into a sperm whale and a pot of petunias. Seeing as they are above a planet when the engage the drive, the whale and the pot of petunias start falling towards the ground and Adams spends several pages explaining what went trough the whale's and pot of petunias mind as they fall to certain death.
The book is filled with strange (borderline insane) parts where, I for one, thought Adams must have been drunk when he wrote it.
Throughout the whole series the reader follows Arthur, which has to face the fact that his planet has been destroyed, everyone he ever knew is dead and he constantly finds out new things about how everything works in the universe. He starts out as really depressed human being. His house is being demolished, he has no luck with love and he doesn't enjoy his life at all. It's quite a morbid experience for Arthur but, in fact, his planet being blown up is the best thing that ever happened to him. He finds joy in his life again and he evolves from a sad, depressed man to a man constantly seeking new adventures.
I think most people can relate to Arthur, in the sense that not all bad things generate more bad things. We've all had hardships in our lives but most of us manage to bring something positive from it. You can go through a bad breakup and of course it feels like everything's hopeless for a while, but you can pick yourself up and find a new relationship and not make the same mistake again. You've learned from that bad experience and in doing so improved your chances at succeeding with your current relationship.
In conclusion, even though the book is a science-fiction book and contains a lot of humour, there are quite a lot to learn from it if you consider the evolvement Arthur makes facing new and difficult situations.

Story of Electronics

So I watched the "Story of Electronics" video where Annie Leonard gives a presentation about the electronics companies bad attitude towards creating more renewable products.

I'm not really one that cares to much about the environment and usually I don't pay much attention to all the doomsday messages the newspapers print out all the time, such as "We are destroying our planet!" and "We don't have much time!". I feel it's abit exaggerated at the moment, what with global warming and all. Then again, she may have some valid points.
Of course companies will do their best to make the product cost-efficient, and sadly today that means making the products somewhere else then their own country. The fact is that the wages are much less and the workforce is huge and eager to get a job, where as in our more modern countries there are more appealing jobs and the mentality of many is that those kinds of jobs, (in this case jobs like just regular assembling) is beneath them.
So on one hand, i can understand the companies, but on the other, they have the power to change their way of making products if they feel like it, as said in the video.
I agree with Annie that some products today might not be built to last, but to say that the companies knowingly make the products more keen to break, I think is just untrue.
I also think that with this fast evolvement of modern electronics we have to get used to them becoming obsolete quite fast but we can of course push for a more long-lasting development of new products, because i believe that sometime we will reach some sort of holdoff of the potential for electronics development in general.

Regarding the article "Snooping Bosses"

After reading the Time's article "Snooping Bosses" I have a few thoughts about it's content.
I do agree that when a worker is using a company phone and/or company computer the employer is well in his rights to monitor those for inappropriate behavior. Of course you don't want your employees to watch porn or spread sensitive information about the company online or to other companies. However when you extend that lack of privacy to the employees homes, I think that's the beginning of something very scary.
Every person should be allowed to have a personal life, and as long as that doesn't effect their work, then why does the boss need to know what you think of him or the job it self? I mean I've had jobs where I don't really agree with the management, like how the run things or just their personality. But does that mean I will not perform to the best of my ability? In my case, no. But if one employes feelings about his boss effect his work, then of course that person should be confronted with his poor performance.
So in my opinion, if the companies feel the need to snoop around, by all means do so, but only at the company itself and not the employees home.