Coincidences

While reading a book on Christian mystics I found that John Bunyan had learned from a book called The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven. Interesting title... and the author was Arthur Dent. Where had I run across that name before? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I wonder...

The net is a terrible distraction and time sink, but it can sometimes find things for you quickly. Douglas Adams wrote:

So this guy [...] assumed – he instantly leapt to the conclusion – that I had deliberately made this extraordinary, involved academic joke. He went through The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and teased out all the parallels between the two books, and he sent me this long dissertation on this 'joke' that he discovered I had 'created'. I had to write back and say, 'I'm sorry, I've never heard of this book.'

Oh well.