I think this is what pisses me off...

You see, I'm torn.

I don't buy into the Daily Mail's scaremongering. They are alarmist, love to prey on fears and are generally filth.

But that doesn't mean that we should all sit back and buy the idea that everything is fine either. That's the trick, isn't it? Bombard you with hyped up fears and you can't possibly make out what you should possibly be acting on. Makes it far easier to dismiss something.

It's disinformation on all sides. The Age of Distraction.

Whether it's from politicians, banks, military, whoever... when you are told that things are perfectly fine, perfectly safe, they usually aren't. Or maybe even always aren't. That applies to science too. We may all have had a good laugh over the doom predictions and it's certainly been a good conversation topic but whether the planet gets devoured by a quasar (unlikely) or not, to say something, anything, is perfectly safe is bollocks.

Plain, unadulterated bollocks.

As I said in the comments of the last posts, it ignores scientific history. It ignores people who died from radiation sickness, scientists who electrocuted themselves, poisoned themselves, did who knows what else to themselves, it ignores the mothers who took thalidomide for morning sickness, ignores the tens of thousands rendered permantantly brain damaged from lobotomies based on a theory that turned out to be complete arse (yet won a Nobel prize) and it ignores so many scientific fuck-ups since the dawn of time.

And ignoring the results of previous experiments is hardly scientific.

Scientific history is full of fuck-ups. To deny that would be to deny science.

Everything is not perfectly safe.

The only question is how large the consequences will actually be when the current generation of scientists inevitably turn out to be wrong.

But the Age of Distraction we live in worked wonders. People had a good old laugh about it. Some people got genuinely scared or at least appeared to on this net we call 'inter'. Some people condemned the scientists. Some people condemned those people. Most dismissed the sources, having long since proven to be alarmist. And, ultimately, we just went on with our lives. Exactly as we were expected to do.

So what if it had been dangerous? What if it is dangerous now?

Next week, people will have forgotten about this and moved on. They have bills to pay, the next big fear to jump to, the next scandal to talk about. After all, you can be sure that some people took advantage of the distraction to move the Iran invasion plans closer. It is the anniversary of the modern green-light all war justification, after all. Perhaps that will be next week's topic, before they move on to the next.

Everything is not perfectly safe.

Some things are a bad idea

Is it because the world is full of pricks trying to destroy it?

Like this guy?

Now I have scenes to finish and have to get ready for this thing next week so I'm not going to off the guy. And I'm not suggesting you do either (just in case I get hauled up for incitement to violence or something). But here is a guy doing something when "a handful of scientists believe that the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could ‘eat’ the planet from within".

Eat the planet.

From within.

For what? Seemingly to satisfy his curiosity. Now, the things is, this is just a Daily Mail piece. They love their scaremongering and will jump at the chance to hype up any remote chances that we might be killed, mugged, damaged by videogames or preyed on by internet stalkers (I know you're here, reading... waiting). And those handful of scientists could well be wrong. It's likely total alarmist rubbish, as the scientists conducting the experiments assure. Like the Millennium Bug. But for it to be worth even the tiniest miniscule risk of creating a shower of black holes that could eat the planet from within, the payoff would want to be pretty damn fantastic. And a few smug satisfied grins doesn't seem to me to be that fantastic payoff.

But Dr.Evans, the guy in question, isn't worried. No, "he is so relaxed about the project, he even wears shorts to work."

Shorts aside, I have to say I don't trust scientists to make any sort of rational decisions. They are prone to getting excited and next thing you know they are performing lobotomies in hotel rooms or something. They just go ahead and so stuff. And (this is scientific law) - stuff has consequences. Those scientists who declare something impossible usually always turn out to be wrong, as do the scientists who declare something perfectly safe and go about doing things like selling radioactive material in tubs.

Having spent a brief stint in University, in the science end, it makes perfect sense - scientists aren't smart. Oh sure, they know a lot of things. About science. But plain ol' basic human common sense just isn't their thing. And it seems the more they know about science, the less smart they become. Now that's just going from observation in one University so it's a big sweeping generalisation but it's one I'm happy to stick with until I meet a smart scientist who can make it all the way through a conversation without coming across insane.

So, yeah, this is likely nothing but I still think he's a dick. I hope he gets eaten by a bear. And if he causes the destruction of the planet, I'll be really pissed off.

At what point does the risk become large enough to justify an assassination, I wonder?