The Total Perspective Vortex is allegedly the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected.

When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, “You are here.”

Located on Frogstar World B, the machine was originally invented by one Trin Tragula in order to annoy his wife. Because she was forever nagging him for having no sense of proportion, he decided to invent something that would show her what having a sense of proportion really meant. Unfortunately the shock of being placed in the Vortex destroyed her brain, but Trin Tragula’s grief was tempered by the knowledge that he had been right and she had been wrong. In Adams’s words, the Total Perspective Vortex illustrated that “In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

— Wikipedia on Technology in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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2010.10.17 Sunday ACHK