A handkerchief, or the holy ghost?
A retired pathologist has uncovered evidence that Jesus may not have died from crucifixion as widely reported.
Far from succumbing to a cross, professor Howes believes Jesus was overcome by hay fever, perhaps triggered by Easter flowers or the dust given off by moths.
“The bible gives quite a few clues that the real cause of death has been covered up”, claimed Howes. “A lot of the ‘evidence’ just doesn’t seem to stack up.”
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New pandas ‘up to 90% more randier’.
Edinburgh zoo is celebrating their first panda pregnancy, after doctors substituted the female with a spaniel in heat.
Tian Tian had initially appeared reluctant to mate with the male panda, Yang Guang. But by pioneering a technique that saw the female bear trapped under a bucket and replaced with a smallish three year-old dog, experts hoped to dramatically increase the chances of conception.
Expert Brian Sweeney explained that it hadn’t all been plain sailing.
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Worryingly clean: Families fear they may soon enjoy UK holidays
A shocking rise in the number of UK beaches that have become ‘clean enough to holiday on’ is being blamed on man-made global warming.
With dryer, warmer summers leading to less run-off into coastal areas, some families fear they could soon find themselves vacationing in Rhyl.
“It’s a vicious circle”, complained David Evans, occasional holidayer and amateur climatologist. “Our carbon emissions seem to be causing ever more barbecues on the beach. I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but I’ve drawn a graph to show the trend. By 2020, even Blackpool could be largely turd-free.”
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Cosmic Microwave Background. Now wash your hands.
The beginning of the Universe has always perplexed the human mind.
But new findings by some of the most powerful telescopes in the world have given credence to the Big Sneeze Theory first propounded by Harold cosmologist Alec Fairchild ten years ago in the Squirrel Lickers’ Arms.
‘Professor’ Fairchild, as he’s known locally, has put in his claim for a Nobel Prize, supported by Eddie, landlord of the SLA. “I remember it well,” Eddie told the Evening Harold, “he was expounding his sneezing theory left, right and centre. In the end, I had to ask him to leave to prevent a flu epidemic.”
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Filed under Around Harold, Intergalactic News, science
Will the world end with a Sprite Deluxe Tourer?
However, the full horror of global warming has come closer to home after scientists confirmed that the weekend’s early clogging of Britain’s road network by caravans was ‘almost certainly due’ to the effects of global warming. Continue reading
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Filed under environment, News, science
Oedi comes from a proud line of dogs that have all been in their mother at least twice.
A West Norfolk Terrier has seen off some tough opposition to be crowned Crufts 2014 ‘Most Inbred Dog’.
With paper-thin skin, no kidneys and a face racked with pain, ‘Swingalong Oedipus IX’ was recognised by judges as the best example of his inbreed, at least amongst the few that survive.
“The finest ones, the ones with no jaw and those darling webbed eyelids, well most of those don’t live much longer than a month”, said trainer Helen Delaney. “And that doesn’t give us much time for weaning, having a pace maker installed or training them for the show arena. Mother Nature can be awfully cruel.”
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Filed under Entertainment, Pets, science
Don’t leave it to chance!
Do you like cheese?
Are you a cheeseophile or a cheeseophobe? Or are you one of a number of people who are cheese-indifferent? Take our quiz and find out!
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Filed under Around Harold, science
“Perfectly harmless”
British scientists have developed genetically modified potatoes that have sufficient intelligence and teeth to fight off small mammals.
For years farmers have been blighted by having their potatoes eaten by mice and rats, and have had to invest heavily in traps and poison. Now, after a three year trial run by Harold village scientist Bjorn ‘Three Fingers’ Bjornsson, a strain of potato has been engineered which is practically invulnerable to field animals and hungry tramps.
Following an EU investigation into the potential for terrifying biotechnology to protect crops, scientists at the John Horse Memorial Laboratory began a trial of savage nightmare potatoes in 2010. An early setback ensued when all the trial potatoes escaped one cloudy moonless night, leading to friction with locals and the mysterious disappearance of every cat in the village. Continue reading
Filed under Around Harold, Farming, science
Laid-back protesters campaigning for energy conservation.
Harold’s Dr Evans has been selected to help trial a new combined health and domestic fuel supply initiative for people suffering from conditions such as obesity and laziness, based on the same technology used in fracking for shale gas.
“Government scientists think there could a lot of re-useable trapped energy in the bodies of people who don’t get enough exercise,” said Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, “especially the ones who are out of work and claiming benefits. Fracking fat, lazy people for the wasted energy they have selfishly trapped inside themselves is one way of helping them to give something back to society.”
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Filed under Health, science, Technology
A spacecraft that has been in hibernation and is half a billion miles away has ‘woken up’ and made contact with the European Space Agency asking “did I leave the gas on”.
The Rosseta spacecraft left the earth in 2004 and was put to sleep 31 months ago to conserve energy, but all its time in hibernation it has had a niggling feeling it may not have turned the gas off.
“It woke up late Monday afternoon,” Gerhard Schwehm, mission manager for Rosetta, said. “We sent messages to check the equipment but it just replied ‘oh bugger’.”
“A quick check showed that the gas had been left on as well as the landing light. With energy prices constantly rising since 2004, the cost of the project to land a craft on a moving asteroid has now doubled.”
However, the extortionate bills are the least of the teams problems. Whilst catching up on the last 31 months the spacecraft has had to deal with news of Jimmy Savile’s death and subsequent discoveries, the horse meat scandal, and finding out Russell Brand is now seen as a credible political voice.
“It could just about handle all that,” Schwehm continues, “but ithas decided to shut back down and crash into the sun after being told Jim Davidson was back on television.”
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Filed under Intergalactic News, International News, News, science
High temperatures can also cause freakishly large penguins.
Climate scientists rescued from a trapped research ship in Antarctica have claimed that their computer models ‘accurately predicted’ that they would get stuck in the first place.
The diesel-powered research ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy had set out on an 8,000 mile journey to highlight how normal people ought to cut down on unnecessary journeys.
But after grinding to a halt in unusually thick pack-ice, climatologist Dr Alan Pecher claimed that it ‘just proved how much hotter the South Pole has become’.
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‘I’ll be back in an hour. I haven’t got the parts on my van.’
A team of contract managers at NASA are working ’round the clock’ to build a tender process for urgent repairs to the International Space Station.
With a critical pump that controls the cooling system failing outside of warranty, finding a contractor that offers value for money has become the agency’s number one priority.
Astronauts on the ISS had hoped to make repairs themselves, but were warned such a move would be considered ‘anti-competitive’.
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Filed under Politics, science, Technology
China may one day put a pyrotechnician on the moon.
A row has broken out between the US and China over a Christmas Day Special Event which was meant to be a surprise for everyone on Earth at Christmas.
The diplomatic row comes after NASA spotted China’s lunar robot placing Roman Candles around the edges of craters on the moon’s surface. China has complained that NASA just wanted to spoil the surprise because they didn’t think of it.
“The US hasn’t bothered with the moon for many moons,” said Yun-Tsi Tao, head of the Chinese Space Agency. “Now, all of a sudden, just because we put a robot up there, they’re all goggle-eyed and spoiling the surprise of the Supreme Leader’s gift to the rest of humankind at Christmas, a firework display on the waning gibbous.”
There were fears that the row could escalate after NASA observed the robot flatten the US flag placed on the moon by Neil Armstrong in 1969. But the situation was defused when the robot carefully put the flag upright again, apparently of its own volition. “We thought it had a moral conscience for a minute,” said NASA, “but, no. It nailed a Catherine Wheel on the flagpole.”
NASA has said it had no idea the fireworks were meant to be a surprise, claiming that most people could see what was going on up there with the naked eye. “I mean, I was looking through a pair of home-made binoculars that my 7-year-old made from a plastic kit,” said NASA spokesman Flt Lt Denver Colorado, “and I had no trouble reading the name of the factory printed on the fireworks. Boy, they’re big rockets!”
Filed under Christmas, Entertainment, Intergalactic News, science, Showbusiness, Technology
Police in Harold have warned the public to be on the look out for an escaped six foot animatronic penis. The man-sized phallus is not thought to be dangerous but does have a tendency to spout some unsavoury stuff from its head.
The penis was constructed by Harold Technologies Ltd and designed to help artificially inseminate elephants as part of a nature conservation project however there appears to be a fault in the programming.
Microsoft researchers have designed a “smart bra” which is so advanced that it can actually be removed by male video game enthusiasts and sport fans.
The prototype is made from patent graphene “NoStick” fabric and has a rear clasp based on the new XBox controller for added thumb gripability.
The aim was to find out if wearable technology could reduce the average time taken for men to unhook and remove ladies’ underwear from ‘forever’ to something more in keeping with today’s busy lifestyles.
Testing in real-life scenarios with specially fitted crash test shop window dummies has proved encouraging, with several male volunteers managing to remove the bras from at least one shoulder inside three weeks. Progress has been slowed by the unexpected tendency for the dummies to eventually grow disheartened with the whole experience, feign headaches and form attachments to each other.
As expected by today’s consumers, the smart bra contains a host of other high-tech wizardry. A discreet LCD display slides out of the underwired front panels when the masculine removal attempt begins, allowing the female wearer to while away the time watching episodes of Downton Abbey as the male fumbles behind her. Road tests of this feature were inconclusive however, with experts predicting that a fifth series may be required before complete removal.
Kevin Planck, chief programmer on the team, spoke to journalists of his excitement over the cutting edge underwear: “It’s amazing! The bra has an embedded electrocardiogram as well as a gyroscope and accelerometer, this thing could put a man on the moon!” Before adding wistfully: “It’s just such a shame that I’m unlikely to ever see one for real.”
All kinds of weird shit going on.
The world of science was left in confusion today after NASA picked up images of particles from the remains of Edwin Hubble.
“What’s really weird” said NASA operative Dr Lucille What “is that the images were beamed back to earth by the deep space imaging device of the same name, the Hubble Telescope. What we witnessed was nothing short of a family reunion.”
Edwin Hubble died more than 60 years ago. He had undoubted success with his science work, discovering that there’s a lot more space outside our own Milky Way and that the universe is expanding, but will always be remembered primarily for the role he played in bringing Chicago University basketball team their first silverware. His basketball skills were put down to his extraordinary ability to zoom in on the target net, seeing it, as he often said, ‘in at least three dimensions’.
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Filed under DNA, Intergalactic News, Lost and Found, science, Travel
Coming soon to an ocean near you!
Oceanologists were said to be “totally stoked” today at the news that the massive new Antarctic iceberg will float into the mid-Atlantic just as the famous London “fatberg”, recently disgorged from the capital’s sewers, also enters the same region of ocean.
The iceberg has appeared from a 270 square mile frozen shelf which recently split off from the Antarctic Pine Island Glacier, while the fatberg is a fifty tonne dollop of accumulated human unpleasantness which nearly crippled the London sewage system.
It is expected that the two giant bergs will swirl ever-closer, each warily seeking maritime supremacy, until they finally clash in a spectacular orgy of bergy power, filling the sea for miles around with raining death of ice splinters and soft fatty globules. Continue reading
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Filed under Entertainment, Penguins, science, Weather
‘It isn’t cruel: they’re only humans.’
A cockroach with an interest in electronics and unnecessary experiments has launched a kit to control cruel, human scientists.
Using a hand drill, some scissors and a drink spiked with Rohypnol, children as young as 8 can modify a low-moral scientist and make them turn left or right.
“This kit can help your offspring find out more about scientists”, claimed the ‘roach. “And desensitize them to the point where they don’t think twice about whether what they’re doing is wrong.”
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Filed under Business, science, Technology
‘A major breakthrough’, but only if you push too hard.
Hot on the heels of the discovery of a new bit of knee, a doctor in Harold has spotted another part of the human body no-one has bothered to notice before.
Dr Evans, a GP used to rooting about in the sweaty bits, claims to have found a ‘second belly button’ somewhere near the first.
“I was examining a patient with my finger, although Mrs Delaney would prefer it if you didn’t name her”, explained Dr Evans, “when I noticed a sort of ‘inverse nose’ in an area just off to one side of her belly.”
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Plenty of space inside Cox’s head.
A team of micro-scientists working inside Professor Brian Cox’s brain say they have found the source of the universe in a small cluster of his brain cells. “The universe we are all familiar with in everyday life is nothing more than a holographic projection from within this man’s imagination,” said Professor Kevin Heidelberg out of Cox’s left ear.
The announcement in such a tiny voice from within Cox’s cochlea would surely have passed unheard had it not been for dentist Dr Richard Burlington, whose own ear ‘was in the right place at the right time’ as he polished Cox’s teeth to perfection. It was a moment in time for the doctor.
“I was plunged into an existential vortex,” Dr Burlington admitted, “questions racing through my mind about the very essence of life and the universe and whether Professor Cox was himself perhaps just a character in one of Dara O’Briain’s dreams. But I pulled myself together, tapped him on the knee and said ‘There, all done now’.”
The discovery that everything is a figment of Cox’s imagination has left a lot of people feeling slightly numb, with a sense of uncertainty as to whether they’re really here or not and whether there’s any point in anything anymore. Worried Harold pensioner Doris Kettle said she felt ‘funny in the head.’ “I’ve been ringing the NHS helpline all day,” she told the Evening Harold, “but all you ever get is an answering machine. Hello?”
The Indian Space Agency is particularly angry at the timing of the discovery and the Pope has spent the day pinching himself. The UK Government has stepped in with a summons for Professor Cox to appear before a select committee and explain himself, a move which the opposition described as ‘lacking imagination and probably futile’.
Meanwhile, the Department of Work & Pensions has called for ‘calm and commonsense’. “The best advice,” said Vince Cable, “is for everyone to relax, take a deep breath and get back to what you’re supposed to be – ” but he was cut short as he spontaneously disappeared in a puff of smoke.
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