Sky is Falling, Say Boffins

Climatologists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim in their latest report that the sky is falling and everyone should run for cover before it comes crashing down.

This latest shock news comes hard on the heels of a warning from the same august body that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, based on an email interview with Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, published in New Scientist back in 1999.

However, this time the Nobel Prize-winning authors assert that they have "got it dead right this time", quoting from the highly respected scientific journal the Oxford Storybook, in a peer-reviewed article published by Ian Beck and colleagues titled "Chicken Licken".

In this nightmare scenario, Professor Beck describes in graphic detail with illustrations and everything how the Earth's atmosphere will suffer catastrophic collapse, bringing clouds, planes, weather balloons and birds down with it. Property damage alone is estimated to run into trillions of dollars. Smaller species of wildlife are expected to be wiped out in a mass extinction. Or eaten by wily foxes.

Critics are already describing the latest revelations as "alarmist", "wildly inaccurate", "hare-brained" and "can I have some of what he's smoking?"

Off Their Crusts

So on the one hand Threshers are to close hundreds of stores and on the other, proper scienticians like Professor David Nutt saying that cannabis and LSD are less harmful than tobacco and alcohol and should therefore be decriminalised.

Is it just me or are the off-licence retailers missing a trick here? The phrase, "I'm just nipping down to the shops for some tabs" could take on a whole new meaning. Think of all the new tax revenue the government could raise, without worrying about cirrhosis, lung cancer, heart disease and all the shit that goes with fags and booze eating up hospital budgets.

But don't send the kids to get your skunk, just in case they come back with the wrong thing.

Vapourware

So the Merkan military-industrial complex are refurbishing their Trident nucular weapons for our UK nucular submarines (once the damage has been repaired) but they have hit a tiny snag.



They've got plenty of plutonium.



They've managed to source a DeLorean DMC-12 that can still just about reach 88mph.



But they've totally lost the plans for one vital component.



It's a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank.



Better known as a Flux Capacitor.



Without it, their nucular missiles are nothing more than fancy doorstops.



Or worse.



All the scienticians involved in the original design have either died, retired or "moved on".



Where's Marty McFly when you need him?

Computer Terms Illustrated #18

Every picture tells a story.

Killer Application

Agent

Access Denied

Flow Chart

Launch

Cache

Back Up

Deadly_Embrace

Point and Click

Footprint

Reload

Favourite

Interface

Comment"Shaken, not stirred."

Nukular Fizzicks Fer Dummy's

Do I have to splain everything? Sigh.

Them scientologists over in Yerp want to find a teensy tiny particle called the Higgs Boson. Hey, there's a dude called Higgs here in Embra, I wonder if he's heard of it? Nah, what are the chances?

Seems the Merkans were too poor to afford both a Space Station and a Particle Smasher, so they abandoned their own little spermint after spending just two billion dollars on it, and concentrated on something that can only be reached by the soon-to-be-decommissioned Space Shuttle and the Dirty Commie Soyuz rockets. I ain't sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Anyways, the science part.

The universe is made up of stuff. Most of that stuff is completely invisible and therefore cannot be seen by astrologers with even the most powerful telescopes, even the one buried underneath the ice at the South Pole. (Hey Cletus, you sure about that part?)

But these boffins always need more money are pretty sure that if they smash some normal stuff together at really high speeds, they'll be able to recreate some of the same exotic stuff that was around at the Big Bang. So they'll be using their LHC machine to run one proton beam clockwise at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light, and another beam anticlockwise at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light. Then they'll smash them head-on into each other at - anybody? No? Me neither.

Ok, let's make it really simple.

Atoms are thought to be made up of quarks.

Quark's


Which are held together by gluons.

Glued On


According to String Theory, every particle has a super-partner.

Superpartner


The electron is matched by the selectron, the quark has the squark, the lepton has the slepton etc.

Slept On


But none of this splains the existence of Mass.

Mass


And without mass there would be no gravity.

No Gravity


So Professor Higgs (anybody remember him?) posited the existence of a field - let's call it the Higgs Field - permeating the entire universe, and as we all know from quantum physics, every field comes with a side order of particles. So the Higgs field imbues matter with mass, and the Higgs Boson, if discovered, will prove this impotent theory.

So far, all that has been tested is that a clockwise beam and an anticlockwise beam of protons can be sent around the loop. Next month the eggheads will make their first attempt to cross the streams.

Crossing the Streams


If it all goes tits-up, the absolute worst that can happen is that the Earth and anything else made of matter or energy, like the universe, will be sucked into a black hole.

Black Hole


And if not, well, there'll be plenty more pretty pictures like this one, so stop whining.

LHC First Beam


Any questions?

Ecksmas Is Coming

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Whinging Again

To: Customer Services, Electronic Arts
From: Farty
Date: 20th November 2007
Subject: SimCity Societies

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you concerning your latest PC game, SimCity Societies. I purchased a copy of this in good faith from a car boot sale this week after reading excellent reviews in the press and that. And not after seeing a mate's bootleg copy at all.

I feel I must point out that the game suffers from some quite serious shortcomings. The characters presented are dull and unimaginative, the settings are dreary to the point of boredom and is there really any need to have detailed descriptions of 25 million Sims, down to the level of names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank or building society account details?

On the plus side, I'll admit it's good fun to cut off welfare to the whole of Liverpool and watch the Scouse scroungers fighting each other over stale bread and sour rat's milk.

On second thoughts, do you have a French version? I could get into this.

Your Sincerely,
Mr Farty