World's most deadliest killers
Unfortunately, the weather in Seattle today is sunny and warm, with just a few tiny brush-strokes of cloud on one small corner of the vast blue canvas of sky. I say unfortunately because, as you may recall, the reason I returned to Seattle for the holidays was that Seattle’s usual grey, drizzly weather is soothing when I have a hangover. Oh well, boredom is also soothing when I have a hangover, and Seattle can still be counted on to provide plenty of that.
My headache is interrupted by the arrival of a telegram from my good friend the renowned thinker Professor Glen Morangie, alerting me to a recent ‘scientific breakthrough’ in Australia. Use of the term scientific breakthrough leads me to expect something momentous, such as the discovery of a new kind of gravity or the invention of a machine which can ensure that the weather is grey and drizzly when I have a hangover. Instead I learn the breakthrough is:
I’ve also heard if you dip the poor sleeping jellyfish’s tentacles in a bowl of warm water he will wet the bed. It’s a good thing jellyfish have no homes, because if they did ‘scientists’ like Jamie Seymour would be placing lighted bags of dog doo-doo on their front steps, ringing the bell and running away. What Jamie Seymour is up to isn’t science, it’s hooliganism (Seymour’s methods are not unusual for a modern ‘scientist’, recall the similar antics of one Professor Lloyd Peck). Seymour’s research is worse than frivolous, it’s dangerous: by depriving the jellyfish of sleep and agitating them innocent persons are being put at greater risk of attack from these "most deadliest [sic]" of creatures (being awakened unexpectedly makes me irritable, I’m sure jellyfish are no different).
So what is going on? The decline of modern universities is no secret. As David Stove observed (of his own university, but it’s an observation applicable to virtually any university): "THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle." It is impossible not to agree with this diagnosis. Stove continued: "Just as a few spots are often improbably spared even in the worst disaster-areas, there are still a few departments in our Faculty of Arts which are passable-to-good. And the disaster I am speaking of has not overtaken the Faculty of Science, or any of the science-based faculties, such as Engineering or Agriculture." Sadly, Stove spoke too soon. The bizarre habits of the ‘scientists’ described above and the pathetic quality of their research ‘breakthroughs’ are all too typical, and indicate that the sciences have now collapsed in the same manner as all the other academic disciplines. We are entering a new Dark Age.
My headache is interrupted by the arrival of a telegram from my good friend the renowned thinker Professor Glen Morangie, alerting me to a recent ‘scientific breakthrough’ in Australia. Use of the term scientific breakthrough leads me to expect something momentous, such as the discovery of a new kind of gravity or the invention of a machine which can ensure that the weather is grey and drizzly when I have a hangover. Instead I learn the breakthrough is:
A team of north Queensland experts found one of the world's most deadliest [sic] killers, the box jellyfish, goes to sleep about 3pm and spends its afternoons and evenings napping on the ocean floor.
"I don't think anyone thought that jellyfish slept," James Cook University jellyfish expert Jamie Seymour said today.
"But the thing that was really mind-blowing is you can shine a light in their eyes when they're asleep, and you can wake them. And when you stomp on the ground you can wake them up as well."
I’ve also heard if you dip the poor sleeping jellyfish’s tentacles in a bowl of warm water he will wet the bed. It’s a good thing jellyfish have no homes, because if they did ‘scientists’ like Jamie Seymour would be placing lighted bags of dog doo-doo on their front steps, ringing the bell and running away. What Jamie Seymour is up to isn’t science, it’s hooliganism (Seymour’s methods are not unusual for a modern ‘scientist’, recall the similar antics of one Professor Lloyd Peck). Seymour’s research is worse than frivolous, it’s dangerous: by depriving the jellyfish of sleep and agitating them innocent persons are being put at greater risk of attack from these "most deadliest [sic]" of creatures (being awakened unexpectedly makes me irritable, I’m sure jellyfish are no different).
So what is going on? The decline of modern universities is no secret. As David Stove observed (of his own university, but it’s an observation applicable to virtually any university): "THE FACULTY OF Arts at the University of Sydney is a disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle." It is impossible not to agree with this diagnosis. Stove continued: "Just as a few spots are often improbably spared even in the worst disaster-areas, there are still a few departments in our Faculty of Arts which are passable-to-good. And the disaster I am speaking of has not overtaken the Faculty of Science, or any of the science-based faculties, such as Engineering or Agriculture." Sadly, Stove spoke too soon. The bizarre habits of the ‘scientists’ described above and the pathetic quality of their research ‘breakthroughs’ are all too typical, and indicate that the sciences have now collapsed in the same manner as all the other academic disciplines. We are entering a new Dark Age.
Have these punks no decency, sir? I hope one day soon they sleep with the jelly fishes.
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