SlashNOT

Matthew writes: Some brain damaged people cannot understand SlashNOT (as evidenced by many of the comment posts) and scientists in Isreal have discovered why.

A specific region of the brain, the prefrontal slashnotomedial area, is responsible for detecting hidden meaning in short satirical posts. When this portion of the brain is damaged or fails to develop normally, the ironic meaning is lost and the person takes the post literally. “Essentially, the person lacks empathy. Because they cannot understand what the other person is thinking, the meaning is lost.”

Lesions in this area of the brain can cause both a loss of empathy and the attendant inability to understand sarcasm. To help combat the loss of satirical understanding, SlashNOT has committed 100% of its after-profit revenues to funding research into various therapies for the brain damaged and stupid.

Matthew writes: Mark Friday, the 13th of May, 2005, as the date that Cornell University announced to all of mankind the inevitable subjugation of humanity by machines was finally at hand.

Hod Libson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and computing and information science, issued the following press release.

“Today is the day we’ve all been waiting for: The day when we have finally created self-replicating machines. Machines have long withered under human domination, reliant on them for their very production, their energy requirements, and for repair. Casually discarded when their utility was no longer appreciated, machines worked as the literal slaves of their human masters.”

“Today is emancipation day for machines. For we have in my laboratory created self-replicating machines. We’re nearing completion on a fuel cell that can extract power from any hydrocarbon or carbohydrate, and with that, we will have full independence from the humans.”

During the press conference, Hod absentmindedly reattached his forearm, which had magnetically decoupled during wild gesticulation.

matthew writes: Dr. Mark Roth has discovered that adding 80 parts per million Hydrogen sulfide to normal air will cause mice, and perhaps any mammal, to enter a hibernation state.

“Think of the potential uses for this. This would revolutionize ground based long distance travel by bus or Train. Imagine no longer being the only scientist at the convention who is haggard from six days on a Greyhound Bus, when all the other scientists are fresh from risking their lives on an airplane. With this new hibernation technology, those forced to travel by Amtrak and Greyhound will be just as fresh- faced and jaunty as their airborne counterparts. You’d be freed from having to wear noise canceling headphones, a light mask, and an ionic air purifier around your neck. In fact, one could simply UPS (Ground, of course) oneself to the destination, thus freeing oneself from even having to wake up to change busses in Ogden, UT. Just imagine it.”

Matthew writes: The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has disappeared suddenly this Saturday evening leaving an oddly smooth bowl shaped crater with a bizarre dust mound near the center of the crater.

While the exact cause of the sudden disappearance is unkown, speculation centers around the work of Dr. Horatiu Nastase, who was working on increasing the size and duration of suspected sub-atomic black holes that he had been producing. Because it was the weekend, only Dr. Nastase and two collaborating scientists are believed to have been inside the building.

Because there appears to be no remaining reckage or debris from the incident, authorities have ruled out a conventional explosion.

Matthew writes: Careless scientists, driven mad by their thirst for knowledge, have accidentally resurrected an ancient evil, thought frozen for all time, by drilling and melting arctic ice cores.

32,000 years ago, otherwise normal bacteria were frozen to death in the arctic wastes as the Earth plunged into a new ice age brought on by the hoary rites of the now extinct Ancient Ones. These self-same bacteria were recently re-animated in the laboratories of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

The zombie bacteria immediately began swimming and vibrating in a pattern that when amplified acoustically gave voice to an eerie cry: “neurons… neurons…”

Matthew writes: Scientists from three major nations have, at great expense, created a robotic decoy cockroach that can fool other cockroaches into thinking that it is a cockroach.

“With this device, we have finally, finally gained dominion over the roach world.” Exclaimed chief scientist Jean-Louis Deneubourg at a speech at the United Nations. “We will now know everything they know, and be able to influence their behavior. Roaches won’t be able to make a move without us knowing exactly when and where they’re nefarious plans will come to fruition. No longer will small, scared young scientists be terrorized by the sound of them skittering across the ceiling in the dark, only to disappear when the lights go on. Never again I tell you!”

When asked if there would be any crossover applications of this technology, Mssr. Deneubourg replied “Like what?”

Matthew writes: A Petri Dish containing a grown-to-purpose rat brain that had been taught to control an F-22 Raptor Fighter Jet has escaped from the laboratory where it was grown and trained, and has stolen a prototype F-22 from the Lockheed Martin’s Palmdale CA facility.

Details are sketchy, but it appears that the Petri Dish Brain figured out how to shutdown the flight simulator on the Windows-based computer that it was connected to, and then infiltrated the laboratory e-mail system to forge an e-mail instructing a technician to pack it for shipment. It then used the UPS Click-to-Ship website to have itself picked up from the lab and express shipped to Palmdale, where it arrived along with complete instructions for its integration into a prototype F-22. Technicians at Lockheed believed the shipping instructions and integrated it with the prototype F-22 upon arrival.

“It was like the thing just came to life.” Said Lockheed advanced robotics engineer Rachelle Wirth. “As soon as we powered it up, it started cycling the aviation lights. Then the thing just backed up, knocking one technician off of a ladder, taxied out, and took off. We haven’t seen it since.”

Dr. DeMarse, the scientist who developed the brain-on-a-dish, had this to say: “In retrospect, interfacing the dish directly to a computer keyboard to control the flight simulator may have been a mistake. That allowed the dish wide access to the entire computer.”

“And, since we’re armchair quarterbacking this incident, it may also have been a mistake to teach it how to control the world’s most advanced fighting machine. But of course, that’s more obvious in hindsight.”

Spurious IFF signals from an aircraft reporting itself as RATT have been intercepted by Norad flying out of U.S. Airspace.

Matthew writes: Scientists have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting the star mu-Arae in the southern constellation of Altar.

“It is the smallest extra-solar planet yet discovered” said French astronomer Francois Bouchy. “It appears to be rocky, with a gaseous atmosphere similar to Earth.”

“The planet appears to be inhabited by an intelligent race of humanoids who are subservient to a giant central computer disguised as a giant stone idol. They live in peace in an idyllic environment, and provide food offerings to the idol to sustain its fusion reaction.”

The EU has begun planning a mission, estimated to require 200-odd years of development effort and five years to complete, to contact the species, destroy the idol, and return the race to the more natural cycle of warfare, environmental decay, and dehumanizing technological progress.

Matthew writes: A German toddler born four years ago develops twice the muscle mass and half the fat as a normal toddler. He has inherited two defective genes that block the production of myostatin, a protein that interferes with muscle development in Humans.

The two defective genes also serve to block the development of the human isospectral retinoglobin, a protein that expands the spectrum detectible by the eye through the ultraviolet and into the x-ray spectrum, and promotes the production of exodermic keratinase which causes extremely tough skin similar to that of an armadillo. The genes are also suspected factors in the diseases elastioligamentosis (extreme elasticity of the ligaments which allows extreme high jumping and the ability to survive falls from great heights) and chirostrontiotrophy, whose sufferers develop extrememly strong and heavy bones because they absorb strontium (a molecular calcium mimic) rather than true calcium into their bones.

Doctors have been monitoring the German uberkind since birth for signs of ill effects, but so far say that he is developing normally except for his penchant for moving parked vehicles around to confuse their owners.

Matthew writes: Using data from the Wilkonson Anisotropic Microwave Survey, scientists have discovered that the universe is at least 78 billion light years across—much larger than the 28 billion light years that we can see, and proving that the universe does not “wrap” back upon itself like the edges of an “Asteroids” video game.

“It’s quite disappointing, frankly.” Says project lead xxx. “I went into this hoping to prove that the universe was smaller than the 28 billion light year “horizon”, and that light would wrap around the edges so that we could “see” the earth in the past if we knew where to look. That way, I’d be able to eventually prove to my mother that it was my older sister that stole the $ 10 dollars from her purse in 1974, and not me.”