It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Difference between revisions

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** ''[[Discworld]]'' dabbles in this from time to time. For example, inIn ''[[Discworld/The Truth|The Truth]]'', it's explained that the dried frog pills the Bursar takes to keep him apparently sane are actually hallucinogens, the idea being that a proper dose will cause him to hallucinate that he's sane (just like everyone else does).

** In ''[[Discworld/Hogfather|Hogfather]]'', when Hex (a non-electronic computer composed primarily of ants marching through glass tubes) becomes unstable, its rationality is restored by by ''typing the words'' "dried frog pills" into it. (This may have been inspired by the [http://www.multicians.org/cookie.html Cookie Monster virus], one of the first computer viruses.)

** ''[[Discworld/Guards! Guards!|Guards! Guards!]]'' introduces the concept of L-Space, where large collections of books warp time and space based on the principle that knowledge is power, power is energy, energy is matter, matter has mass, and mass warps space-time. Thus, the reason why owners of independent book stores tend to be so eccentric is that they're actually from an alternate dimension.

** Then there's the time in ''[[Discworld/Sourcery|Sourcery]]'' the characters travel across the sea in a magic lantern. This works because one of them is holding the lantern, and they're all inside the lantern. The trick is to complete the journey before the universe catches on... oops, too late.

** In a footnote in ''[[Discworld/Mort|Mort]]'', there's a passage regarding the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle's theory of kingons (or queons), the elemental particle of monarchy, that he believed traveled faster than light; there could only be one king at a time and there couldn't be a gap between kings, so monarchy must travel faster than anything else in the universe. His plans to use this discovery to send messages by carefully torturing a small king to modulate the signal never came to fruition because at that moment the bar closed.

*:* Lampshaded later in the same episode, but with love and idealism:

*:* Inverted in "When Aliens Attack", with the Professor explaining, using perfectly sound science, how aliens could know about a show that hadn't aired in a thousand years:

**::* Curiously this contradict the previous statement about having changed the speed of light.

**::* Careful. The light that made it to Omicron Persei 8 was "old light," so to speak, that is light that was generated ''before'' the change in the speed of light, thus it traveled at the speed for which a lightyear was still accurate (distance traveled in one year at 2.99x10^8 m/s). The only really odd thing is that a lightyear was not redifined. However, with this series, they probably just didn't want to change the numbers on the traffic signs.

*:* [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]] in [[The Movie|the movies]], especially [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?|Bender's Game]].

*:* In "Mars University", the characters meet Gunter, Professor Farnsworth's talking monkey. Fry asks if Gunter can talk because he was genetically engineered, but the Professor laughs and tells him that genetic engineering [[What We Now Know to Be True|is a bunch of science fiction mumbo jumbo]]. He then explains that Gunter's intelligence and ability to talk come from "his electronium hat, which harnesses the power of sunspots to produce [[Foreshadowing|cognitive radiation.]] "

*:* The ship going faster than the speed of light by moving the universe around it is probably a reference to the Alcubierre drive. Also the ship takes in dark matter which is probably not accounted while calculating the input-output ratio, thereby resulting in an absurd 200% efficiency.

*:* And then there's the Secret Military Organization needs Sheep to power their sheep-powered ray gun, despite the fact that the farm he escaped from was a sheep farm with at least 50 more.

*:* One example was during an episode where Brain was planning to sue a major company:

**:* And the gag doesn't stop there. When it went to trial, {{spoiler|someone actually is able to explain how the microwave works. But he's at a complete loss on the creamer.}}

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