Monday, April 19, 2004
Nature - having followed a link from Wetware [why is no-one updating anymore?], I was browsing the Nature News section, and found this article on the effect of trade winds on time. Looking at the date, I'd guess this was an April fool. Especially since it cites people with names like Inocente and Chronotis (who studies the history of time), and a certain Emmet Brown (originally I thought it was some in-joke about brown ants, emmet being a cornish word for ant. And then I remembered Back to the Future, and what's the name of the Doc? So Hill Valley University...Oh, I get it now).
I guess it helps if you speak Spanish though - Prima Mentira meaning first lie according to Babelfish, and Chiste Inocente is innocent joke. Centre for Spin Studies - well that's obvious enough, expect it really should be the Campbell-Mandelson CSS. Reg Chronotis - [via google] a character in both Doctor Who and Douglas Adams's work [should have guessed that]. Mileva Maric - Albert Einstein's first wife. William Hartnell - actor who played the first Doctor Who. Gallifrey - Yet another Doctor Who reference [My God, and not one single Star Wars reference!].
So I'm guessing it might be made up then (for a start no scientist is ever as practically minded as the ones quoted). [Added later] Oh it does actually say at the bottom "April Fool!". But I just scanned past it the first time round.
Except having read one article that sounds too silly to be true, one starts expecting some of the others to be made up. Which in Nature, can be rather a lot of them. Maybe they run an April fool story every week.
This is worrying me, I can't get the concept of some of the stories being fake out of my head.
So I'd better do something else now.
Anyhoo,
PS. You've just got to love MS Word. Doctor Whom indeed.
I guess it helps if you speak Spanish though - Prima Mentira meaning first lie according to Babelfish, and Chiste Inocente is innocent joke. Centre for Spin Studies - well that's obvious enough, expect it really should be the Campbell-Mandelson CSS. Reg Chronotis - [via google] a character in both Doctor Who and Douglas Adams's work [should have guessed that]. Mileva Maric - Albert Einstein's first wife. William Hartnell - actor who played the first Doctor Who. Gallifrey - Yet another Doctor Who reference [My God, and not one single Star Wars reference!].
So I'm guessing it might be made up then (for a start no scientist is ever as practically minded as the ones quoted). [Added later] Oh it does actually say at the bottom "April Fool!". But I just scanned past it the first time round.
Except having read one article that sounds too silly to be true, one starts expecting some of the others to be made up. Which in Nature, can be rather a lot of them. Maybe they run an April fool story every week.
This is worrying me, I can't get the concept of some of the stories being fake out of my head.
So I'd better do something else now.
Anyhoo,
PS. You've just got to love MS Word. Doctor Whom indeed.
