Science 

A Call for More Scientific Truth in Product Warning Labels by Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky from the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Vol 36, No. 1As scientists and concerned citizens, we applaud the recent trend towardslegislation that requires the prominent placing of warnings on products that present hazards to the general public. Yet we must also offer the cautionarythought that such warnings, however well-intentioned, merely scratch thesurface of what is really necessary in this important area. This is especiallytrue in light of the findings of 20th century physics.We are therefore proposing that, as responsible scientists, we join together inan intensive push for new laws that will mandate the conspicuous placementof suitably informative warnings on the packaging of every product offeredfor sale in the United States of America. Our Suggested list of requiredwarnings appears below.Warning: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.Warning: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe,Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional tothe Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the DistanceBetween Them.Caution: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.Handle with Extreme Care: This Product Contains Minute ElectricallyCharged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred MillionMiles per Hour.Consumer Notice: Because of the 'Uncertainty Principle,' It Is Impossiblefor the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where ThisProduct Is and How Fast It Is Moving.Advisory: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through aProcess Known as 'Tunneling,' This Product May Spontaneously Disappearfrom Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in theUniverse, Including Your NeighborUs Domicile. The Manufacturer Will NotBe Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result.Read This Before Opening Package: According to Certain SuggestedVersions of a Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting ThisProduct May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred MillionYears.This is a 100% Matter product: In the Unlikely Event That This MerchandiseShould Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion WillResult.Public Notice as Required by Law: Any Use of This Product, in Any MannerWhatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe.Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That ThisProcess Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.Note: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Togetherby a 'Gluing' Force About Which Little Is Currently Known and WhoseAdhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.Attention: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon,the Consumer Is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of99.9999999999% Empty Space.New Grand Unified Theory Disclaimer: The Manufacturer May TechnicallyBe Entitled to Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, theConsumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above andBeyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the SevenNew Dimensions Are 'Rolled Up' into Such a Small 'Area' That TheyCannot Be Detected.Please Note: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When theConsumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist orWill Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.Component equivalency notice: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons,Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in EveryMeasurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers,and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied.Health Warning: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, SinceIts Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to theUser.Important Notice to Purchasers: The Entire Physical Universe, IncludingThis Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally SmallSpace. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence ofThis Product in That Universe Cannot be Guaranteed.

Is There a Santa Claus?As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help fromthat renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased topresent the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species ofliving organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insectsand germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santahas ever seen.2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world.BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish andBuddhist cihldren, that reduces the workload to to 15% of the total - 378million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumesthere's at least one good child in each.3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the differenttime zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west(which seemes logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santahas 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down thechimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under thetree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get backinto the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course,we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept),we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least onceevery 31 hours, plus feeding etc.This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-madevehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles persecond - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assumingthat each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds),the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariablydescribed as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no morethan 300 pounds. Even granting that ''flying reindeer'' (see point #1) couldpull TEN TIMES the normal anount, we cannot do the job with eight, or evennine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not evencounting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous airresistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion asspacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeerwill absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short,they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeerbehind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of asecond. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim)would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he'sdead now.

Night Before Christmas For Readers in their 23rd Year of Schooling 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood-burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas. The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebra. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal cranial coverings, were about to take slumbrous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof. Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing the fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline aqueous precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself -- thus permitting my incredulous optical sensor to peruse a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by an octet of diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his undulate motive power traveling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen ... ''Now Dasher, now Dancer...'' et al. -- guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities. As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved -- with utmost celerity and via a downward leap -- entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebon residue from the oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle. His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his molar regions and nasal aptenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsuite facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water. Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smokingpiece whose gray fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned hosiery with articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith affected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: ''Ecstatic yuletides to the planetary constituence, and to that self-same assemblage my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn.''

New scientific theories4th RunnerUp-- The earth may spin faster on its axis due todeforestation. Just as a figure skater's rate of spin increaseswhen the arms are brought in close to the body, the cutting of talltrees may cause our planet to spin dangerously fast.

Speaking of spelling, here's a news bulletin ........ The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would be known as ''EuroEnglish.'' In the first year, ''s'' will replace the soft ''c'' . . . Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard ''c'' will be dropped in favor of the ''k.'' This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ''ph'' will be replased with the ''f.'' This will make words like ''fotograf'' 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mess of the silent ''e's'' in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away. By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ''th'' with ''z'' and the ''w'' with ''v.'' During the fifz yar, ze unesesary ''o'' kan be dropd from vords kontaining ''ou'' and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After ze fifz yar, ve vil hav a realy sensibl vriten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evryvun vil find it easy tu understand each ozer. ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!

Technical Night Before Christmas 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas. The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconcious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal had coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof. Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, nothing thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said rival that of the solar meridian itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more vertignious velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen - ''Now Dasher, now Dancer...'' et al. - guiding them to the uppermost level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities. As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost celerity and via a downward leap - entry by wary of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodius cloth receptacle. His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water. Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey fumes forming a tenuous elllipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly lowering and than elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless. Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from the aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt aboutface, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: ''Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn.

Save the Yeasts EVERY TIME A LOAF OF BREAD IS BAKED, APPROXIMATELY 150,000,000 YEASTS ARE KILLED. Come to the award-winning 1987 film, ''The Very Small and Quiet Screams'' -- a cinematic electromicrograph of yeasts being baked.''A must for those who care about yeast, and especially for those who don't.'' +------------------------------------+ | Evening showing in Johnson & Wales | | Pirsig Auditorium: 7PM, 4/19 | +------------------------------------+============================================================================ SPONSORED BY Brown Anaerobe Rights Coalition (BARC) Student Bakers for Social Responsibility Coalition for the ELevation of Life (CELL) Campus Crusade for Fetal Matters============================================================================ Defend all life: 'from greatest to least, from human to yeast!'' This poster printed on 100% yeast-free paper.

New scientific theories2nd RunnerUp- The 'Why Yawning Is Contagious' Theory: You yawnto equalize the pressure on your eardrums. This pressure changeoutside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear pressures, sothey must yawn to even it all out.

New scientific thoeries1st RunnerUp- If an infinite number of rednecks riding in aninfinite number of pickup trucks fire an infinite number ofshotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they willeventually produce all the world's great literary works in Braille.

New scientific theoriesHONORABLE MENTION: The quantity of consonants in the Englishlanguage is absolutely constant. If consonants are omitted in onegeographic area, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian ''pahks''his ''cah'', the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to ''warsh''his car and invest in ''erl wells.''

scientists Decode the First Message From an AlienCivilization...Simply send 6 x 10 to the 50 atoms of Hydrogen to theStar System at the top of the list, cross off that starsystem, then put your Star System at the bottom of thelist and send it to 100 other Star Systems. Withinone-tenth of a Galactic Rotation you will receiveenough hydrogen to power your civilization untilentropy reaches its maximum! IT REALLY WORKS!

New scientific theories3rd RunnerUp- Communist China is technologically underdevelopedbecause they have no alphabet. The lack of an alphabet meansthe Chinese cannot use ''acronyms''; thus, they cannot communicatetheir ideas at a faster rate.

A herd of buffalo can move only as fast as the slowest buffalo, and when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole,because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving bythe regular culling of the weakest members. In much the same way the humanbrain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, we all know, kills off brain cells, but naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, constantly making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.

New scientific theoriesGRAND PRIZE WINNER: When a cat is dropped, it ALWAYS lands on itsfeet; and when toast is dropped, it ALWAYS lands with the butteredside facing down. Therefore, I propose to strap buttered toast to theback of a cat. When dropped, the two will hover, spinning inches above theground, probably into eternity. A ''buttered-cat array'' could replacepneumatic tires on cars and trucks, and ''giant buttered-cat arrays''could easily allow a high-speed monorail linking New York with Chicago.

''Marine biology researchers have developed a new method to fend off shark attacks. If you are diving and are approached by a shark they recommend that you swim towards it aggressively and punch it in the nose as hard as possible.'' ''If this doesn't work, beat the shark with your stump.''

The Three Laws of Thermodynamics 1.You can't win. 2.You can't break even. 3.You can't quit the game.

Q: How do you embarrass an archeologist?A: Give him a used tampon and ask him which period it came from.

Handy guide to modern science:If it's green or wriggles, it's biology.If it stinks, it's chemistry.If it doesn't work, it's physics.

Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body. One said, ''It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints.'' Another said, ''No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous systems many thousands of electrical connections.''The last said, ''Actually it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?''

More gay banter...Four men got together at a reunion. All of them had sons and they starteddiscussing them.The first man said his son was doing so well, he now owneda factory, manufacturing furniture. Why, just the other day he gave hisbest friend a whole house full of brand new furniture.The second man said his son was doing just as well.He was a manager at a car sales firm. Why, just the other day he gave his best friend a Ferrari.The third man said his was doing well too.He was a manager at a bank.Why,just the other day he gave his best friend a the money to buy a house.The fourth man just shook his head. He said his son was gay and hadn't amounted to much.But he must be doing something right because,just the other day he was given a house, furniture and a Ferrari by his friends!