News of the News

KALLIKAK, Gattaca, Saturday (NotScientist) — Genetic testing companies are promising to match couples based on Escherichia coli testing, touting the benefits of biological compatibility and claiming a match means better personality match, better sex and conclusive proof that they match down to the asshole.

“How many dating services can you think of where assholes can meet an asshole they really deserve?” said Eric Holzle, founder of AssholePersonalityDisorderMatch.com.

People tend to be attracted to those whose personalities are appropriately complementary to their own. APDMatch claims to be able to ascertain this by scientifically measuring the characteristics of a prospective couple’s digestive tracts.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) inexplicably fails to detail Asshole Personality Disorder. However, a diagnosis of APD requires five or more of the following to be present for a significant period of time:

• Self-importance

• Refusal to acknowledge or even comprehend social rules
• Delusions of adequacy
• Believes others would do just fine if only they were sensible like him
• Beliefs appear to change to match the situation, but that’s just other people being idiotic
• Pride in their superior people skills
• Recto-cranial inversion
• Projection of all symptoms on this list onto those around them.

“If we can make sure that assholes end up with other assholes,” said Dr Holzle, “we can save the rest of us from dealing with their ridiculous bullshit.”

But don’t put too much faith in this, experts said. Dr. Rocio Moran, medical director of the General Genetics Clinic at the Cleveland Clinic, called the idea “ridiculous,” and said the science of assholism is too complex to work out by looking at a few bacterial traces.

“They are just trying to make a buck,” she said. “Focusing on getting those bucks from assholes is, of course, commendable. But assholism is subtle and endemic. How many times have you heard some asshole proclaim, ‘hah, that really sticks it to those assholes!’?”

Holzle was not able to point to any success stories. “Quite frankly, the site tends to attract assholes. And do you think we ever want to talk to these people again? We have to swab these assholes’ goddamn assholes. What a pile of shit this job is. What the hell was I thinking? Apparently some have bred. This will probably doom the human gene pool. I’m so very, very sorry.”

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, Tuesday (NNN) — Women with large breasts appear to attract the attention of men, scientists were absolutely amazed to discover.

Researchers from the University of Metro, writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour Illustrated, have spent many, many hours studying 16,000 women and girls, and their boobs, in quite close detail to investigate anecdotal reports that men’s attention is often attracted by women with sizable mammaries. Moreover, the more spectacular the norks in question, the greater the propensity for passing men to walk into a lamp post in a comical manner.

The more voluptuous women were also found to be more intelligent on average, performing better on cognitive tests, although the male researchers were reduced to drooling idiocy and largely not all that interested really. “We don’t want to compromise our scientific objectivity by seeing if the subjects are capable of speech,” said one researcher with his hands firmly jammed into his pockets.

The story was illustrated with a picture of Nigella Lawson, who has a degree in mediæval and modern languages from Oxford, a really quite splendid pair and a propensity for leaning over on telly.

The researchers speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips, such as Omega-3. Or possibly something to do with our caveman ancestors, as these sort of stories tend to be. But pretty much no-one read that far.

Further studies are likely to prove that water is wet, the sky is blue and that men, particularly researchers and science journalists, think with their cocks. In the meantime, here’s a helpful, educational and newsworthy illustrative photograph of Nigella Lawson’s fabulous rack.

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SECURITY ZOETROPE, Westminster, Wednesday (NNN) A device claimed to “smell” human fear is being marketed as identifying terrorists by detecting “fear pheromones” in sweat.

“The challenge lies in the characterisation and identification of the specific chemical that gives away the signature of human fear,” said project leader Professor Tong Sun of City University, “especially the fear of losing funding for security theatre. If we can reliably detect this fear, we should be able to land some eyewateringly lucrative contracts in the very near future.”

The research is funded by the Home Office. “The project relies on a government with a firm commitment to policy-based science, but the Tories look as craven over David Nutt’s firing as Labour, so we should be coining it in for a good while yet.”

The technology will assist airport security officers in picking out suitable subjects. Sensors can reliably detect if someone is a bit brown, or a bit foreign-looking, or has a non-Anglo-Saxon name, or if they might be thinking of giving cheek to security officers. It will work in conjunction with the millimetre-wave “naked” radar, currently used to identify terrorist subjects with large breasts.

The false positive rate will be only 5% on a terrorist detection rate of 1 in 100,000, meaning only 99.95% of subjects flagged will be a complete waste of time to finger up the arse with a latex glove. “But we’re sure the government will agree that mere statistical evidence is meaningless in the face of the vital necessity to send the right message,” said Prof Sun, “that if you make trouble the government will quite literally forcibly fuck you in the arse until you bleed. So just shut the fuck up and keep giving us money.”

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LASCAUX TESCAUX, Town Centre, Saturday night (NNN) — Modern humans and Neanderthals had sex across the species barrier, according to Professor Svante Paabo, a political scientist researching the British National Party.

Prof Paabo will shortly publish his analysis of the entire Neanderthal genome, using DNA retrieved from fossils. He aims to compare it with the genomes of modern humans, chimpanzees and neo-Nazis to work out where it all went horribly wrong.

“What I’m really interested in is, did they have children back then? And did these children go on to form the English Aborigine population of 17,000 years ago? And did their pamphlets make any more sense back then, and when did they introduce a football game to their regular Saturday bloodbaths?”

Such an answer might ease the controversy over recent contradictory discoveries. Some specimens seem to have both modern human and Neanderthal features, some even managing to string words into apparent sentences on Question Time. Some cave paintings of the time appear to be condemnations of “mud people,” particularly smart and beautiful ones who patronise them in public appearances.

“I used to believe Neanderthals were primitive,” said Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, “but in the last ten to fifteen thousand years before they died out, around thirty thousand years ago, they were leaving behind complicated bead designs that appear from other cave paintings to translate, as far as we can work out, to ‘Fuck off you brain-dead fascist wanker.’”

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DACRE, Moron Piers, Tuesday (NNN) — Associated Newspapers today suspended all injections of scaremongering bollocks after a reader seemed to die of stupidity hours after reading the Daily Mail.

Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam, was found dead in his armchair after reading the UK Daily Mail’s campaign against cervical cancer vaccines and the Irish Daily Mail’s campaign for them in the same hour. “The doctor said his brain function had ceased six months before,” said his grieving wife Brenda, “shortly before he started getting the Mail home delivered. It was about then he started smelling funny, too. But only yesterday he was talking about asylum-seeking Poles and house prices!”

Critics of the Daily Mail have said it will encourage promiscuous idiocy, with reports of outbreaks of Richard Littlejohn. “Big Publishing is abusing our grandparents for memetic experiments. It’s all about money for them. A hundred-year-old criminal enterprise targeting our loved ones!”

Associated Newspapers has refused to say whether it would still allow tens of thousands of grumpy old gits across the country to receive the paper in the months ahead. But there were calls for the entire Daily Mail distribution programme to be suspended in the interests of sanity and good taste.

A number of Busybody’s mates down the pub have reported similar side-effects after our reporter paid them for their kind participation in this story.

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OVER 60 MILLION GOT SERVED, Just Over The Border, Wednesday (NNN) — Biotechnology companies banking on a severe swine flu pandemic were shocked this week when US health officials approved four H1N1 vaccines, triggering a selloff in the sector.

“This is outrageous fiscal irresponsibility from the Democrat Party,” said analyst Brian Adams. “A lot of these companies have basically been trading on pandemic concerns. How can the United States possibly lead in the biotech revolution without serious damage from the pandemic? They’re destroying business value!”

The World Health Organization said it could infect as many as one-third of the world’s population, or 2 billion people. “Most of these are in the Third World, of course. If they got all their drugs cheap — or, God forbid, free — that would cut our gross takings by as much as five percent. Just what the hell do they think they’re doing in there? We’ve spent quite enough time and money on onerous intellectual monopoly laws. That money is our right as creative individuals, as the true creators of objective value!”

Businesses in the US will give the swine flu vaccine to their workers, on an “as needed” basis — those being the ones whose insurance they are paying for. “At least the illegals won’t get health care, so they’ll still be a good breeding ground for new and profitable bugs. Thank God.”

Adams said there was still a chance that H1N1 would mutate, rendering vaccines less effective. “Failing that, we’ll just have to see what we can do to push it along. You didn’t write that down? Good, good.”

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CRYSTAL CAULDRON, Goldacre, Monday (NotScientist) — The pharmaceutical industry is reeling from the news that more and more new drugs do no better than a placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in research and development, the FDA approved only 19 new drugs in 2007 and 24 in 2008.

The placebo effect has been little-understood. Trials in different countries and cultures can show different results. Ratings by trial observers can vary significantly from one test site to another. Advertising has conditioned people into thinking a little branded pill will make them all better.

“This throws R&D spending into significant doubt,” said Cylon Number Six of GlaxoSmithPfizerMonsanto. “It’s clear that marketing has always been the way to go, and that spending four times as much on marketing as research was the best thing we could possibly have done for humanity.”

Researchers are now going full steam to discover new forms of nothingness to apply to new diseases. Explorers have been sent into the Amazonian rainforest to find new plant species to dilute to the point of no molecules of the original being present. Traditionally ineffective tribal remedies from around the world have been patented in Western countries. “If ‘4′33″’ can be copyrighted, we can patent the placebo gene!” The treatments will be publicised in the new Elsevier journal, The Australasian Journal of Nothing Whatsoever.

Homeopaths are up in arms at the pharmaceutical industry “muscling in on our territory,” said Ravenwoo Granola of the Specialist Homeopathic Institute of Technology. “We developed the finest, most refined and provably harmless snake oil in existence! There’s nothing homeopathy can’t cure! Er, there’s nothing that isn’t brought to us for consideration and helping the patient trigger the placebo effect themselves. A snip at £5.99 a bottle and fifty quid a consultation! And we absolutely proved it harmless! We did double-blind tests against placebo … Bugger.”

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, August (NNN) — Men prefer websites designed by men, women prefer those designed by women and designers prefer those designed by designers, according to a new study by Gloria Moss, a lecturer in Press-Release Science at Bucks New University.

“It’s August, so the differences spring from our … caveman ancestors!” said Professor Moss. Men’s eyes are slightly further apart than women’s, giving them better stereoscopic vision for ogling large breasts. Men prefer to design and use websites with straight lines, unfussy detail, regular typography and tits. “Digs in Lascaux in the south of France show the original version of nuts.co.uk, which was painted on the walls of the cave.”

Women prefer websites about cooking, cleaning, housework, submissive workplace behaviour and gossip, particularly the sort in free newspapers you glance at on the train. Pink flowery decorations are also favoured. Also, they need to show more cleavage in the workplace and waggle it around at after-work drinks to get ahead in their careers.

Designers write blog rants about typefaces and kerning, under the delusion that anyone gives a shit. “Everyone else uses Comic Sans specifically to piss them off. Wind ’em up and watch ’em go!” They also spend inordinate amounts of time trying to put in penis logos to amuse their mates on b3ta.

Professor Moss’s research is to be published in the Journal of Metro in September. “Free newspapers count as publication credits these days. Had you even heard of Bucks New University before this article? Me neither.”

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I DON’T FANCY YOURS MUCH, Down The Pub, Monday (NNN) — Women are gradually becoming more attractive in an evolutionary “beauty race,” at least where Photoshop is available.

Beautiful women get more attention to detail and fixing of flaws than their plainer counterparts, certainly better than the days of actual physical airbrushes. Men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors, as proven by several generations of Top Gear.

“You just can’t do much with the men, the clone tool on the hair’s too obvious and then you get on some snarky ‘Photoshop Phoulups’ blog,” said Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro. “We had the same problem with Susan Boyle’s eyebrows.”

Beautiful women in magazines have more children and these daughters, once adult, also tend to end up in magazines. “Look at Paula Yates and her daughters, Peaches and Pixie … er, I’ll think of another example in a moment.”

The heritability of attractiveness is widely accepted. When Elizabeth Jagger became a model, her mother, the former model Jerry Hall, said: “It’s in her genes. Self-obsession, thickness … I contributed too, of course.”

Professor Hunt looks forward to future developments. “Beer’s always good when Photoshop fails. Women need to carry beer around with them more.”

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WELL I NEVER, Do-As-You-Please, Wednesday (NotScientist) — The minister for science and innovation, Lord Paul Drayson, has praised the high standards of science journalism at the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists in London yesterday. About 900 delegates attended the conference to congratulate each other on the remarkable quality of their press release transcription skills.

“The public relies on dependable science journalism to understand the forces shaping the modern world,” said Lord Drayson. “Your work covering the things that really matter, such as pseudo-evolutionary explanations of current fashion trends, what will give us cancer this week, scaring the crap out of people over the MMR vaccine so their kids die of birth defects from measles instead and why fellatio is required for female health helps people make important choices about their lives and builds a vital gap between scientists and the public. I mean bridge.”

He dismissed claims that typical science reporting primarily results in sensationalist and misleading headlines. “I wish more journalists would follow your example. The ones covering MPs’ expenses certainly should have been working the way you do.”

The speech was delivered to a backdrop of A-level students in lab coats. And bikinis.

Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro calculated that Lord Drayson’s speech could power all of Britain for six months purely from harnessing the steam coming out of Ben Goldacre’s ears.

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CRYSTAL CAULDRON, Surrey, Monday (NotScientist) — In a revolution for the forces of allopathic hatred and the negation of human spiritual potential, a strike force of rogue sceptics has, using the funding of their pharmaceutical death-dealer masters, negated homeopathy with the proving of a new remedy: homeopathic homeopathy.

The preparation was initially energised using the explanations for Plutonium Nitricu 30C (homeopathic plutonium), Positronium 30C (homeopathic antimatter) and Rational Sceptic 10C (homeopathic exploded brains of people hearing of the previous two). The succussions of the subsequent dilutions were done using a mechanical potentiser based on the arm of Dr Samuel Hahnemann, the discoverer of homeopathy, which pounds the mechanical arm against a firm rubber pad from a height of five inches twenty times in two seconds. This is also effective when applied to the patient just before presenting the bill.

The provers found they experienced the complete sensations of every ingredient that had not been added to the solution as, like all homeopathic solutions, it was guaranteed to contain no ingredients whatsoever. This gave them complete understanding of all possible effects of nothing but pure distilled water energised only by a £5.99 price tag from Boots on the bottle. They then proceeded to get new jobs doing something actually useful for a living.

Ravenwoo Granola (Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine, University of Bums on Seats) countered that hundreds of years of carefully documented study of homeopathy could not be at error. “I dosed myself with a homeopathic preparation from my own anus before considering your question, thus assuring my brilliance and perspicacity on this subject.”

Internet users, however, heralded the results, suggesting pouring the contents of a homeopathic preparation of Scientology into their DSL modems to protect them from blithering stupidity, and homeopathic goatse to protect them from 4chan.

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THE END TIMES, Canberra, one hundred light-years behind (NotScientist) — A two-hour meeting with Australia’s Chief Scientist Penny Sackett has failed to convince Family First Senator Steven Fielding that human activity is the main cause of climate change.

Senator Fielding also expressed scepticism concerning chemistry, physics, evolution and the “Galilean heresies” concerning the Earth and the Sun and was not entirely sure of this new-fangled “arithmetic” or its place in our schools. He was unimpressed by Dr Sackett’s “evasions” when he questioned her. “When I asked her ‘why do carbon emissions only prove the Earth is six thousand years old and we’ll all have gone to Heaven in the Rapture by the time it becomes a problem?’, she wanted to rephrase my question and not answer it. Then she’d bang her head on the wall, I don’t know why.”

Senator Fielding has recently returned from a fact-finding mission to the United States, where he met with several climate change sceptics and Discovery Institute scientists who revealed to him how “magic beans” were responsible for temperature rises. “We also established that homosexuality causes greenhouse gases. But if we can filter the carbon dioxide at the Internet, apparently, we should be able to stop it dead in its tracks.”

The Government’s prospects of getting its carbon trading scheme through the Senate this fortnight rest with Senator Fielding and other crossbench senators who hold the balance of power. The Greens and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon also refused to back the scheme, but are thought to understand basic logic and mathematics and so may have objections that do not cause neural injury to contemplate.

The Australian Senate is elected by proportional representation per state. Senator Fielding represents those constituents, otherwise discriminated against, who remain climate change sceptics, evolution sceptics, ten-finger sceptics, outbreeding sceptics and walking upright sceptics.

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VIVISECTOR, Furtopia, Thursday (NotScientist) — A small dinosaur that once roamed northeastern China was covered with a stiff, hairlike fuzz, which suggests that anthropomorphic perversion evolved much earlier than thought — even before the Internet.

Scientists had previously identified kitten ears and fake whiskers on otherwise-cute women. But the “dinosaur furries” are only distantly related to catgirls, and may herald a horrifying new realm of things man was not meant to know.

The creature, Fursecutus dramaticii, walked on two legs and had a long tail. And a large penis. And huge breasts. Six of them. Really. Not meant to know.

Yiff Therianthrope, the one scientist on the team who did not spork his eyes out immediately upon making the find, has reported on the discovery in this month’s Journal of 4chanic Studies, including his own artistic reconstructions of the creatures, lovingly rendered in crayon on brown paper, eschewing such oppressive bourgeois affectations as knowledge of perspective or anatomy and sold on Furbid for several hundred dollars each.

Creationist groups have experienced a tremendous boost in membership, particularly the Westboro Baptist Church and their godhatesfurries.com website. “If we ever wanted proof that ‘evilution’ was the work of Satan,” said Sir Frederick Phelps, knighted after his recent Nobel Peace Prize, “dinosaur furverts are it. Pogroms and concentration camps are the only sane response. Remember: if anyone tries to tell you that hermaphrodite lizard sodomy is only right and natural, just answer: ‘But you are a furry.’”

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DO-AS-YOU-PLEASE, Faraway Tree, Sunday (NNN) — Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design and 10% believing in young Earth creationism, according to a survey by religious thinktank Theos.

Coincidentally, 35% of these respondents were found to have family trees bearing less resemblance to a branching structure than to a briar bush, and 12% considered people with ten fingers to be “signs of the devil at work.”

“We need to do whatever we can to stop ‘evil-lution,’ as I call it,” said Stephen Green of Christian Voice from his backroads homestead in deepest Carmarthenshire. “To this end, we must preserve the miracle of God’s grace of sexual reproduction and focus it inwards. Like breeding thoroughbred race horses or pedigree Chinese Cresteds.” Two of his hands emphasised this statement with a particularly striking banjo riff while the other one was holding the phone, with vocal harmonies courtesy the parasitical twin head attached to his rump.

Later this month scientists and academics from across Europe will meet in Dortmund, Germany, to discuss evolution and creationism and specific difficulties regarding the acceptance of evolution theory in their home countries. “We’re hoping they’ll be a self-solving problem as they get out-competed by amoebas, fungus and Essex girls,” said Professor Richard Dawkins, “as long as we can stop them taking the rest of us with them.”

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KALLIKAK, Gattaca, Friday (NotScientist) — The first British baby designed to be free of the “journalism” gene has been born.

The breakthrough gives hope to other parents afflicted by the condition, often running in families. “It will be mere seconds before blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan clones genetically engineered with hyperintelligence are frog-marching into the White House, the Kremlin and the United Nations to take over the world and condemn the rest of us inferiors to perpetual slavery,” said one rejected embryo before the autoclave kicked in.

Pro-life campaigners claim it is morally wrong to weed out imperfect babies. “Today it’s journalism, tomorrow it’s cancer, next year it’ll be Young Conservativism,” said Ann Widdecombe. “They’re already screening for all manner of cosmetic reasons in parts of Europe that I can’t specifically name right now. This is a tool to search and kill! We must shun and despise the children resulting from this genetic Frankensteinism.

“Instead, we should deliberately bring children into the world to suffer and then cut their disability benefits. To prove the strength of our feeling on this matter, we’re implanting unwanted eggs carrying breast cancer genes into ourselves personally, so the children can grow up living in fear their whole short lives of their own breasts killing them. It’s right and natural. We’re also looking to reintroduce bubonic plague and smallpox, on conservation grounds.”

“I don’t think you can equate eight cells in a dish to a human being,” said the parents’ doctor, “although it could probably edit the Daily Mail.”

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FEDERATED EARTH, The Future, Now (NNGadget) — After a minor shipping delay, flying cars have arrived for all. As of today, all major cities also feature moving pavements and weather control and commuter flights to the Moon will be commencing tomorrow.

Earth President-Elect Barack Obama welcomed the representatives of the Galactic Brotherhood to Washington, assuring them that the many wars on Earth were now to be conducted entirely by robots, though the robots would be carefully monitored and pulled out of battle and granted citizenship the moment they achieved sentience. He also offered the galactics free access to Google, with only the requirement for tasteful contextually-attuned text advertising to be imprinted on their DNA.

The reactionary forces of the twentieth-century United States finally conceded defeat and shut down the Five-Year Plan Tractor Plants of Detroit, where ridiculous oversized transport was bashed together by semi-literate peasants between fifths of vodka from the nerve gas factory next door, and the Five-Year Plan Software Plants of Redmond, where ridiculous oversized operating systems were bashed together by semi-numerate fresh graduates between fifths of Red Bull. The record and movie company back catalogues have been placed into the public domain for the preservation of human culture and the comic-book capitalists of Wall Street have been sent to calming, soothing, humanistic re-education facilities. “We’ll teach them to love again,” said Mr Obama.

Robot housecleaners are now universally available at quite reasonable prices. The robot companion for your child, designed to say “I LOVE YOU” while the child hits it repeatedly, was an early release for Christmas 2007. The new model features the voice of Justin Fletcher from CBeebies and is designed for parents to hit repeatedly.

Future innovations for the century include the rise of the Great Old Ones from their eternal sleep to take back the Earth and consume the souls of all humanity, first driving them slowly insane. The citizenry is being prepared for this eventuality using repeated broadcasts of In The Night Garden.

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Self-rest ye merry atheists
Let nothing you dismay
There is no evidence that Christ
Was born on Christmas day
So save us all from unreason
When we were gone astray
O tidings of reason and fact
Reason and fact
O tidings of reason and fact

In Bethlehem, in Israel,
They’re shooting it out still
Over who the imagined friend
Likes best and always will
Imaginary friends are always
Good reason to kill
O tidings of reason and fact
Reason and fact
O tidings of reason and fact

From centuries of learning
A rational person came
And unto those there listening
Brought tidings of the same:
How that in our great universe
There is no magic name.
O tidings of reason and fact
Reason and fact
O tidings of reason and fact

“Fear not then,” said the person,
“Let nothing you affright,
This day is good as any
For a pure virgin Bright,
To free all those who think in fog
From muddled thinking’s blight.”
O tidings of reason and fact
Reason and fact
O tidings of reason and fact

The thinkers at those tidings
Rejoiced much in mind,
And told their flocks a-feeding
In tempest, storm and wind:
And went to writing straight away
The ounce of sense to find.
O tidings of reason and fact
Reason and fact
O tidings of reason and fact

Now to good sense sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This tide of true humanity
All other doth deface.
O tidings of reason and fact
Reason and fact
O tidings of reason and fact

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SHOPPINGLAND, Consumerville, Friday (NotScientist) — US researchers have repeated the famous “Milgram test,” with volunteers told to electrocute another volunteer, and discovered that normal, everyday people just like you and your neighbours would still make pretty good Nazis in a pinch.

Dr Jerry Burger found that even after the other volunteer (an actor) faked screams of pain, 70% were prepared to increase the voltage they thought was punishing the untermensch. Even when another actor entered the room and questioned what was happening, most were still prepared to continue.

“Most people just want to raise their kids and earn a buck and not be bothered. Tests prove these assholes will happily get you fired for a five-dollar discount, no matter how nice you were to them — if I promise them 5% off their weekly groceries, I dare you to find me one who’ll stop a second before they sell you to the secret police.”

Dr Abigail San ran the experiment herself and concurred. “It’s not that these are not good people — it’s that you can die in a fire if they’ll get a nicer telly for it. I wonder when the next fucker to say ‘never again’ mentions Rwanda. Oh, never?”

Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam, condemned the experiments. “Everyone knew this already — these ‘scientists’ have upset their test subjects for no good reason. It’s just not right or moral. We should send the buggers back where they came from. I bet they’re all on the dole too.”

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CHANNEL 5, Wapping, Friday (NNN) — New findings printed today in all papers and broadcast on ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 reveal that television is “virtually a mental vitamin” for intelligence and emotional well-being. In addition, it helps treat arrhythmia, psoriasis, tooth decay, distemper, dropsy, haemorrhoids and impotence, and lets you see through clothes.

The findings were revealed today by the study’s funders, a consortium of commercial television broadcasters and newspaper proprietors. They have recommended that watching television and reading printed newspapers be made mandatory as a public health measure, and that the Internet be renamed “The Paedophile Channel” as a warning to possible users.

“Regular television viewers have a deeper understanding of popular culture, are up-to-the-minute on artistic ideas of the moment and have something to talk to their co-workers about the next day,” said Dr Desmond Murdoch. “The quick-fix nature of televisual gratification accumulates and quickly becomes permanent. The tightly-scripted performance brilliance of thirty-second messages provides the viewer’s necessary daily dose of thoughtful mental stimulation and wit.

“I met a scientist once,” said Dr Murdoch. “Well, he said he was a scientist. He handed me a remarkably large cheque.”

Further results from the research group are expected to include revelations that jaffa cakes, crisps and Coca-Cola are “fruit” for the purposes of achieving one’s government-mandated five portions a day, and that snake oil liniment does all it is claimed to.

“It lets you see through clothes, man,” emphasised Dr Murdoch.

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NOME TROPICANA, Drinks Are Free, Long Hot Summer (NotScientist) — Scientists say they now have conclusive proof that global warming is due to man’s influence.

The man in question is Bob Mongler, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam. Rapid and significant warming in both the Antarctic and Arctic can only have been caused by Bob’s influence, says the report in Nature Geoscience. Bob is the cause of significant warming over both polar regions since 2000.

Greenhouse gases from Bob are the main driver of the change, along with Friday night curries, chemicals and particles of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. He also drives a 4×4, reads the Daily Mail and drinks Stella.

“We tried large simulations of natural climate change to see if we could obtain the same results,” said Dr Peter Stott of the Met Office, “but it couldn’t be done. It is only when you factor in this thoughtless prat’s influence that you achieve these results. With Bob’s influence the findings are consistent and predictable. Without it they are not.”

“It’s not clear what we can do about this wanker,” said Dr Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia. “His wife is actually worse, you know.” Mr Mongler mumbled something about asylum seekers and political correctness gone mad.

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