Posted by Jonathan on January 22, 2002, at 23:36:48
In reply to Anti-Gravity Humour, posted by IsoM on January 22, 2002, at 2:21:20
Thanks for posting this - it really cheered me up :)
> I think you need to have a "science-bent" mind to see it as funny but I loved it.
So did I - no science graduate's mind could be more bent than mine.
> I almost feel guilty posting here now that I'm feeling so much better
I'm glad that you're so much better - you deserve your good fortune, having contributed so much to this community. However, you should never feel guilty about continuing to post when you feel well. We'd all miss you if you left us, and feeling better empowers you to help us even more.
I feel guilty for the opposite reason: nearly all the time I feel too ill, miserable, tired, apathetic, useless, uninspired, indecisive and perfectionist either to post here or to do anything else of value. Do you think that, if we bring them together, your guilt and mine will annihilate each other like matter and antimatter, converting all their mass m into the pure energy E = mc^2 that I so desperately need?
> maybe a little humour helps from time to time.
Not "maybe" but indubitably.
Your post reminds me of the Battle of Britain misinformation that the success of RAF pilots in intercepting Luftwaffe bombers on night raids was due not to a new secret weapon called radar, but to their superhuman night vision resulting from the high proportion of carrots in their diet. Perhaps we should be more tolerant towards those whose posts here are eulogies to implausible food supplements: they are only encouraging potential hijackers, ideologically prohibited from letting their women talk sense into them, to drink gallons of fish oil so that they may be detected at airports by specially trained sniffer cats =^..^=
> News media revealed last November that notes and textbooks were found in an abandoned house in Kabul that indicated that a member of the Taliban was pursuing various lines of scientific exploration. His level of expertise was judged to be at best that of an undergraduate student in chemistry and physics, which is still good enough to make stuff blow up. (Trust me. I was a chemistry major. I know.)
That's true: I taught chemistry to 11-18 year-olds a long time ago, before I drifted into the safer world of university mathematics. Some of my favourites among the experiments I devised and performed to capture my students' interest would these days certainly capture the interest of the Anti-terrorist Squad.
Dr Bob might block me in perpetuity if I told you how to dissolve xxxx in yyyy, pour the solution over finely ground zzzz, look disappointed that nothing has happened and leave the mixture in a relatively safe place, nonchalantly ignoring it and carrying on with the lesson until the solvent has evaporated. The explosion shook the entire building and, when the deputy headmaster arrived a few seconds later to see what had happened, the lab was filled with dense white smoke and Form 3 were hanging out of the window gasping for breath.
One of my favourite real schoolboy howlers is:
"Calcifuge - a machine for spinning out calcium".
Perhaps Al-Qa'eda botanists are now trying to breed genetically modified lime-hating plants in the hope that they will concentrate uranium-235 from a suitable soil instead of calcium and explode when they grow to a critical mass.
The security loophole which allowed Al-Qa'eda to acquire these undergraduate textbooks and computer technology has now been closed. When my wife ordered a computer online she had to click "yes" or "no" in answer to the following question:
"Will the product(s) be used in connection with weapons of mass destruction, i.e. nuclear applications, missile technology, or chemical or biological weapons purposes?"
She Who Must Be Obeyed truthfully answered "no", the vendor accepted her money and the death ray she is building in our garden shed will soon be ready to be launched into earth orbit.
And here's her favourite insight into everyday life in one of the still remaining Al-Qa'eda hideouts:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2001/11/22/matt.gif
Jonathan.
poster:Jonathan
thread:17058
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020112/msgs/17089.html