Boffin Bollocks!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I would love to have been a scientist.

Not a real one, I’m not clever enough or dedicated enough for that. Rather, I would have loved to have been one of those idiots who try to make a name for themselves off pronouncements on things about which they know absolutely nothing.

I saw another one of their headline grabbers (that I like to call “boffin bollocks”) recently. The headline went something like “Shock Warning Aliens Are Coming.” And it wasn’t about more Mexicans making their way north across the US border.

It was from NASA’s Chief Scientist, Ellen Stofan, and claimed that first contact with alien life will happen “very soon” – very soon being not tomorrow, but within the next decade or two.

“We know where to look,” she confirmed.

Yes, “UP” would be my non-scientific guess at the best direction.

“We know how to look,” she added.

Again I am forced to agree. Personally I’d use a telescope, and a great big one, but that’s only me!

Ms Stofan was ably backed up by a colleague, John M. Grunsfeld, who came out with good sound bite words and phrases like “solar system”, “galaxy”, “the icy crusts of Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Europa” (my favorite I think) and “the internal water within Saturn’s moon Enceladus”.

Mars and the Martians also got mentioned, but only with suggestions that life may have at one time been present on the planet. H. G. and Orson Wells had beaten them to visits by the ‘real’ Martians many, many years ago.

More scientists, this time at the Parkes Observatory in Australia, have been carefully studying peryton-a type of radio signals similar to Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) which are known to come from somewhere else in the galaxy.

For years, they had been puzzled by these brief but intense bursts of radio waves that in some ways appeared to be coming from deep space. There have been dozens of reported perytons, some dating back to the 1990s, and theories about the signals’ origin included ball lightning, aircraft, and components of the telescopes themselves.

Then this year they made a break through. They discovered the source of the rogue signals. They were coming from – no, not somewhere deep in the galaxy – but instead from the microwave oven in the next room.

In what has to be the understatement of the year, Emily Petroff of Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology admitted, “It was quite surprising that it ended up being microwaves.”  I bet it was!

I must add that I’m a big fan of space exploration, always have been, since I was a kid and was captivated by the television coverage of the Apollo missions. My only regret is that it all takes so very long that I will have gone ‘supernova’ before we see any tangible results of that exploration. There’s never a handy wormhole around when you need one, is there!

I am also a big fan of TV sci-fi series like the Star Treks, the Stargates and so forth, and of movies from ‘War of the Worlds’, thru ‘E.T.’ to ‘Independence Day’ and beyond. But I also have the wit to realize I’m being entertained and these things are not real.

So is there life out there?

I wouldn’t rule the idea out for a second. But what I would rule out is that intelligent life is ever going to be found within our Solar System, maybe not even within our Galaxy. But it could be out there somewhere.

The question we should be asking is, assuming it is benign and not hell bent on conquering all in its path, or maybe viewing us as a culinary delicacy, would that intelligent life really want anything to do with a planet full of people who, for almost their entire existence, seem to want nothing better than to continually wage war on each other?

I think having observed us for a while they would probably pass us by without calling in to say hello.

If I were in their shoes – or space boots – that’s what I would do – and at warp speed too!

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It’s A Funny Old World

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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It definitely is a funny old world, especially when it comes to global warming and particularly the reasons for it happening – even though it isn’t.

It has also been funny watching all the pseudo-scientist and political upstarts trying to jump on this bandwagon to try to promote themselves in the public eye. Al Gore managed to bag himself a discredited Nobel Peace Prize and millions of dollars with his well timed trip on this gravy train. Although I still don’t know what global warming had to do with a prize for peace because as far as I know they hold wars in all temperatures!

I say “global warming” because that was what they called it. Scientists even falsified data to “prove” that the planet was getting hotter and hotter because of the increased emissions of carbon dioxide generated by us, people. We may well be in the midst of a climate cycle, but the reliable evidence does not show that it’s our fault. Nor is it the fault of too many cows letting too many farts, which was another one of the not so scientific theories that was doing the rounds a few years ago.

Then there was the theory that the Polar ice caps were all going to melt, raising the sea level so much most of us would drown. Technically I suppose if you were keen enough you could drown in a couple of inches of water, but I think personally I would just pull on my gumboots and walk casually toward some higher ground.

Unfortunately for it’s supporters, the REAL evidence has been showing little or no change in average temperatures, certainly not the apocalyptic amounts forecast by the flawed models of the global warming scientists.

On that very subject, some of these scientists are currently “baffled” by the fact that, rather than the Polar ice caps melting, there now seems to be an all-time record area of sea covered by ice around the Antarctic’s coasts.

The beautifully named lead scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, Ted Scambos, admitted “What we’re learning is, we have more to learn,” as he announced the latest annual sea ice maximum for the austral continent.

The sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent reached its maximum extent on September 22, 2014, at 20.11 million square kilometers (7.76 million square miles). This is 1.54 million square kilometers (595,000 square miles) ABOVE the 1981 to 2010 average extent, which is nearly four standard deviations above average.

This new record follows consecutive record winter maximum extents in 2012 and 2013. The reasons for this recent rapid growth are not clear. Climate scientists have been puzzled by the behavior of the southern ice for many years.

You have to laugh as you watch the pro-global warming scientists squirm as they try to fight off reality by proclaiming that their forecasts should be correct and what is actually happening should be wrong!

Suck it up guys, whoever created the model to show that the icecaps would melt was wrong, not the ice caps!

In fact, air temperatures have been steady for the last fifteen years and more, and deep ocean temperatures are not increasing either. They call it a mystery. The real mystery is why anyone still takes them seriously!

But, remarkably, a lot of gullible people still do. When it became too obvious that there was no global warming, rather than giving up their lucrative money and publicity maker, it’s proponents simply changed the name from “global warming” to the more generalized “climate change”.

And as recently as the last weekend of September, hundreds of thousands of these idiots turned out in the ‘People’s Climate March’ in New York City calling for governments to address the so-called “crisis” surrounding climate change. The demonstration was timed to coincide with a meeting at the United Nations to discuss how countries can come together to combat temperature fluctuations, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, blizzards and other forces of nature.

So, if the evidence does not back up the theory of global warming (er, I mean… climate change) being the fault of mankind, why do governments persist in wasting time on the subject with wide-ranging plans and conferences in a host of different countries?

There are various reasons.

Politicians like Obama used it to get himself elected and has had to stick with the lie ever since or back down and publicly admit he was a fool. Other politicians in other countries are similarly caught.

Also a false crisis like global warming is a welcome distraction from some of the real crises we are facing due to continued government incompetence.

And the manufacturing of a global warming crisis leaves the way open for the imposition of “carbon taxes” and other spurious ways for governments to try to steal our money. Watch so-called “carbon taxes” being levied on corporations who will no doubt pass on the cost to the people who buy their products.

Yes, that’s you and me, folks. We’re going to have to pay to fix something that isn’t even broken!

It’s painful to have to watch this going on. Even more so when there seems to be nothing that we can do to bring stupid people to their senses. All you can do is have a rant now again.

Oh, look, I just did!

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The Weirdest Of Coincidences

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The hospital was just like any other.

It had accident and emergency, medical, surgical and all the other usual departments and wards. It also had an Intensive Care Unit, well staffed and managed, just like any other.

Except that this Intensive Care Unit wasn’t just like any other. Patients kept dying in this unit.

Not only that, but they always died in the same bed, and at the same time, on Sunday mornings at about 11:00 am, regardless of their medical condition. 

It had been that way for a while and doctors, nurses and the hospital management were not only puzzled, but rather nervous too.

What could possibly be the reason? The laws of probability made this occurrence way more than one in a million.

Some even thought it had to have something to do with the super natural.

Had something terrible happened in that ward sometime in the past?

Was the hospital built on the site of some awful tragedy that had taken place years ago?

Was there some kind of portal to another dimension where evil entities could enter and leave?

There were many more questions than answers, but no one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths always occurred in the same bed and around the same time, 11:00 am Sunday.

Eventually a worldwide team of experts was assembled to investigate the cause of the incidents. It included scientists, medical experts, a crew with electronic detection equipment, several clergymen  and even a medium. 

They were prepared for anything and everything.

Or so they thought.

The next Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11:00 am all of the doctors and nurses nervously waited with the team of experts outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about. 

Some were holding wooden crosses, others prayer books and other holy objects to ward off the evil spirits. 

Then, just when the clock struck 11:00 am, the ward door suddenly burst open.

The crowd of watchers gasped.

Pookie Johnson, the part-time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward.

He walked over to the wall beside the offending bed, unplugged the life support system and plugged in his vacuum cleaner.

Turns out the culprit was Pookie and not a spookie after all.

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