…a little humor to brighten your day.
A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named “Governmentium”.
Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311.
These 311 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.
A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over 4 days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 4 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration.
This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “Critical Morass”.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.
An interesting article looking at democracy, it’s shortcomings and can it be made better?
by TOM W. BELL
Suppose you and your friends want to throw an ice cream party, but you can afford only one flavor. Each of you has a different favorite, so you disagree about which flavor of ice cream to buy. No amount of voting can discover the one best flavor of ice cream for your party; you simply cannot please everybody.
Democracy evidently does not have all the answers. Yet you and your friends would readily agree to reject some flavors of ice cream. Nobody wants to party with dirt-flavored ice cream, for instance.
The lesson: Democracy works best at correcting mistakes.
via Can We Correct Democracy? : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education.
…what an excellent job.
The IPCC fraud case (but not the planet) hots up
Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Two weeks ago I reported the central error in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007) to its secretariat. After the contributing scientists had submitted their final draft report, the bureaucrats and politicians had tampered with the HadCRUt3 graph of global instrumental temperatures since 1850 by adding four trend-lines to the anomaly curve and drawing from their relative slopes the unjustifiable and statistically indefensible conclusion, stated twice in the published report, that global warming was “accelerating” and that the “acceleration” was our fault.
Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Environmental Research Letters ought to have known better than to publish the latest anti-scientific propaganda paper by John Cook of the dubiously-named Skeptical Science website. Here are just a few of the solecisms that should have led any competent editor or reviewer to reject the paper:
An interesting look at NASA and the costs involved with some of the hair brained schemes that seem to come out of the Agency and Washington.
By S. Fred Singer
Since the first Apollo landing in 1969, NASA has been looking, unsuccessfully, for an overarching goal to match this spectacular achievement: landing men on the Moon. The International Space Station (ISS) has not turned out to be what it was advertised. It has made no breakthrough scientific contributions; it has not explored the solar system further; and it has not excited a great amount of public interest since it was set up. In retrospect, many would refer to it as a white elephant. Its annual maintenance costs are a drain on the NASA budget. Even worse, its supply has to be contracted out — to Russia. The trouble is: ISS had no well-defined goal.
Yes, there have been plenty of proposals. During the first Bush administration, NASA thought it had a clear go-ahead and proposed a manned Mars mission, in addition to putting a manned base on the Moon (to do what?). But once the price tag was revealed, around 400 billion dollars (which was then real money), the NASA plan was DOA (dead on arrival).
Since then there have been proposals to establish a permanent colony on the Moon — again without any clear justification. Many have compared it to the ISS and labeled it another white elephant. In fact, it would add little to our knowledge of the Moon, and probably would not even create much public excitement: “Been there, done that” — to much of the public, just a repeat of the Apollo mission.
