Friday, July 25, 2008

Men of Science


A round of applause for the astrophysics boffins who’ve confirmed Einstein’s theory for the 200th time. I myself was convinced after the 27th validation, but we gorillas can feel these things in our bones. Einstein is big in the Congo. When the local witch doctor got uppity after a successful voodoo spell, I put him in his place by likening him to a pimple on the great man’s arse.

“He could have snapped his fingers and made you disappear into a Black Hole,” I said. “You would have come out in a new universe with seven extra dimensions – all of them extra fat in your case.”


He pretended to laugh it off, but my spies tell me he’s been trying to lose weight ever since on a diet of river shrimp and water cabbage.


Scientists are feared and respected in our part of the world. Their mojo is big and their medicine is powerful. By “scientist”, I don’t mean pontificators and provocateurs of the Dicky Dawkins variety. Pasty-faced sissies of his ilk would run crying to mummy if their tour bus got a puncture. No, it’s the men with Big Machines who are revered over here – the guys who can sweep Mother Nature off her tender feet and leave her lying in a haystack with a guilty flush on her face. “Don’t mess with The Engineer,” said Wise Old Melonhead, “for he is the wizard who maketh loud noises that causeth the lion to shit its pants”.


Take my old friend
Dr Maroon, born and bred in the mean streets of Glasgow. When most of his schoolmates were bumming cigarettes, he was in the garden shed, dissecting his mother’s hairdryer and putting it together again with 20% more oomph. The other boys may have laughed at the short trousers he wore until his 15th birthday, but that was water off a duck’s back for a lad destined to become the Werner von Braun of the Scotch turbine. Today, Dr Maroon’s finely-chiselled features appear on TV to announce new contracts for the shipbuilders of the Clyde, while the bully who flushed his head in the school bog draws minimum wage in a chippy outside Ibrox Stadium. Brains, talent and hard work – they always tell in the end.

Yet in spite of all their achievements, the technologists of our age have not been given due prominence in popular entertainment. For every Scotty of the Enterprise, there must be a hundred tough-talking TV detectives roughing up suspects and flashing their weapons indiscriminately. Everyone loves to watch Dirty Harry firing his 44 Magnum into the juggernaut trying to flatten him, causing it to crash headlong into a nearby Wal Mart, but spare a thought for the men in hard hats who come round next morning to check the building for structural integrity. In their desire to give people cheap thrills, movie producers have lost sight of the big picture.


Perhaps this lack of exposure explains why engineers have such trouble reproducing. For all his macho talk about warp drive, I can’t remember Scotty ever getting laid. Depriving the human gene pool of their excellent pedigree is a terrible waste. If I were the manager of a sperm bank I’d pay premium rates for their man juice, and give a discount to any loving lesbian couple willing to bear their babies and raise a new generation of techno-men. Perhaps Dr Maroon should get the ball rolling by making a donation forthwith.


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Comments:
"the guys who can sweep Mother Nature off her tender feet and leave her lying in a haystack with a guilty flush on her face."

I've always liked engineers. It must always be at the back of their wives minds though, about whether their coupling is of more sexual or hydraulic interest to their husbands. Pistons and thrust and what not.

Docs was on the telly? When? Where? Did anybody YouTube it?
 
The line Sam has quoted above is one I also repeated to myself several times: it was that beautiful.

What a shame about Scotty, and you are right: I don't remember one single episode of Star Trek that featured a romantic interest for him. That is so unfair! And I've have gone for him over Captain Kirk any day.
 
I believe the actor who played Scotty was still fathering children well into his late 70s - so perhaps even acting as an engineer improves boosters and thrust?

I visited Dr Maroon's blog via your link. There is a young man in very tight red clothing stood there. It was very distracting.

x
 
This is the second blog post this week that's aroused the long-repressed Trekkie inside me.

I hope Hollywood doesn't miserably screw up the next movie version of Star Trek I keep hearing is in the works...but it's most likely they will :(
 
I've only dated one engineer. He was very methodical in bed. It was a bit disturbing but not nearly so much so as his putrid breath.

I know quite a few *software* engineers that I'd be quite happy to tango with. Do they count?
 
Today, Dr Maroon’s finely-chiselled features appear on TV to announce new contracts for the shipbuilders of the Clyde.
I'd check the date on those English newspapers you are reading, GB, unless I'm very much mistaken Clydeside shipbuilding is a thing of the past.
 
Old Melonhead is wise indeed. Incidentally, I discovered (during my last stint in Uganda) that pants-shittingly loud noises also have a similar effect on crocodiles.
 
Oh those little short trousers and their little red chafed thighs and the smell of damp tweed that was never dry cleaned and the bloody knees and the tide mark round the neck. It's just not the same nowadays.
 
Unfortunately, GB, the link between Engineering parents and Autistic children doesn't help the sperm bank for getting premium rates.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1509172/Parents'-marriage-choice-may-lead-to-autism.html
 
Sam: The doctor was there for the cameras when the last big gunboat emerged from its drydock. The footage has not been made available for security reasons.

Mary: Actually, there was an episode when he had a crush on a girl, but he behaved like a jolly uncle rather than a lover.

Kitty: And his Scotch accent was fake as well! It sounded genuine to me. That picture was of a cyclist, Dr Maroon has no particular interest tightly-clad boys.

Letty: It'll be OK as long as they don't bring in the Voyager team. Data and Picard are the key characters.

Ms Dgny Oh dear, he should have gargled first! He was probably following a manual which didn't bother to mention such obvious points. Bill Gates is a software engineer - I hear he's a pistol in the sack.

Lady Daphne: There are still a couple of yards producing for the Royal Navy. Dr Maroon is a loyal servant of the crown.

Kyknoord: Yes indeed, it works for all predators. The closer the noise is, the faster they shit.

Pi: I'm sure Dr Maroon is very nostalgic about those days. He might even still have the short pants.

Kim: That's disturbing. Better make sure the lesbian mother is a very empathic type of woman.
 
My father was an engineer. He spent most of his career working for the military industrial complex designing things which kept Leonid Brezhnev up at night. Alas, the hush-hush nature of the work didn't allow for public accolades.

Cheers.
 
I'll do some research on those software engineers. I know, I know, hard work but it's only fair.
 
I've always maintained that strange little men doing peculiar things in their back sheds, have done more to change the world than anything.
 
Being an engineer must be really cool. You get to drive trains too!
 
GB, you make the common mistake of mistaking technologists for scientists.

The key difference is that technology students drink about twice as much as the scientists (i.e. about a quarter the capacity of your average medic). This has the obvious effects on their reproductive systems.

Scientists' reproductive capacity is limited by their adherence to The Scientific Method, which would try the patience of any woman.
 
These are astute observations, GB.

Cow fears for the gene pool when the smartest ones seem to leave the fewest offspring.

Moo!
 
I believe that Scotty's woman was in fact the Starship Enterprise...

I wonder if scientists are not so successful with women because they lack the romanticism with which to court them? Everything has to be factual, truthful and supported with several cross references which tends to make chatting women up something of a long-winded and delicate affair :)
 
Ah yes, every week I listen to science podcasts trying to inmbue some of their latent sexiness.

And still no lesbians will pay me to inseminate them.
 
Randall: Well he had the satisfaction of playing for the winning team. I assume his work had nothing to do with Brezhnev's prostate.

Ms Dgny: I wish you every success. Make sure they use mouthwash first.

Norman: Dr Maroon is not a peculiar little man, but his feats have been admirable both in and out of the shed.

Joe: That was Casey Jones! His occupation is called "engine driver" outside of America.

Kevin: Technologists are applied scientists, so they ought to have a good grasp of the mechanics of reproduction. I don't see any good reason to allow medics to breed.

Ms Cow: The lesbians could help redress the balance by using the smartest sperm in the bank.

Mrs Cake: Einstein was quite a charmer, but his science involved imagination and thought experiments. The ones who service machines are likely to find women too complex and unreliable.

Mr Guru: Perhaps you should start by offering a few free samples.
 
I wish the people that ring my doorbell early in the morning to "save" me would read the news article that you linked to.
 
I tried to be an engineer when I left school and failed abysmally, so I've been in awe of them ever since.

This must have been suggested before: Lee Meriwether in her Time Tunnel lady scientist role as the perfect mate for Scotty.
 
Hawking must rate highly in the jungles. I too feel for those hypotheticals who have to clear up after the movie stars destroy things with trucks
 
'Pasty-faced sissies of his ilk would run crying to mummy if their tour bus got a puncture'

Mmm, as an avid reader of Professor Dawkins, I feel I must defend his ilk, of which I am one. Many is the time I've wandered into unexplored territory in the interests of science, only to find my way blocked. I run nowhere except to the corners of my mind whereupon I call upon my scientific skills to free myself. Rightly, we should be feared, for who else but scientists know how to find the Truth?
 
I don't know what to say G.B.
Clearly you are the foremost blogging gorilla in the world.
I'm overcome. Pride is a sin in Scotland but I don't care. I'm so proud I could burst.
 
McCrumble, The truth? You can't handle THE TRUTH !
One of our foremost scientists, of which you will agree we have had totally hunners, said that man would never fly in heavier than air machines, that's right, the great John Logie Baird. The fact that he had flown in a metal skinned aircraft to Bruges to sell his salt water soap, did not deter him in his search for the truth of this statement.

G.B. do you know who Einstein's favourite scientist was? James Clerk Maxwell-Maroon*, that's who. Father of theoretical physics, electromagnetism and polaroid sunglasses.


*He dropped the Maroon when his first marriage failed. The only issue of that troubled confluence being Lysander Maroon, my great grandfather.
 
You're wondering where the polaroid sunglasses come in, aren't you G.B.?

Well,*smug little snitter to myself* Clerk Maxwell-Maroon discovered the electric vector in natural light you see, so, bear with me, polarising lenses filter this out thus "polarising" the light.
You're confused.
Look at it this way.
Say a beam of light is doing this, right? Well the filter makes it do that, d'ye see?
Look.
Before computers, we used to make models of stressed parts in perspex then shine the polarised light through them onto a screen, (like at the cinema)and we could see what the hell was going on inside the thing. It was fantastic.
Nowadays some pipsqueak twerp will just say "computer says no" and that's that.
Of course Maxwell-Maroon did so much more that imrove angling for gits, like unifying all those theories and shit, but man I still love him for the fun we had with perspex in the good ol' days.
 
I know how Dr. Maroon feels. Do you know, they won't even let kids do the sodium fusion test at school any more? No wonder they think SP3 hybridisation is a character in Balamory.
 
Jenny: Yes, by God, they should learn about the space-time continuum before presuming to save people's souls.

Gadjo: Miss Meriwether was a devilishly pretty woman in need of a man who'd tell her to let her hair down. I'm not sure Scotty would have been up to the task.

Mosha: Hawking has been earmarked as Einstein's valet in the next world. We accord him the respect he is due.

Dr Joe: Dicky Dawkins is not fit to unbuckle your sandal, Dr Joe, for you are an applied scientist like Dr Maroon. Man has parasites, you find ways to kill them. Man needs to travel, Dr Maroon fine-tunes the locomotion. Man goes to church, Dicky Dawkins needlessly nags him about it.

Dr Maroon: Ah Dr, I always suspected you were connected to the House of Maxwell. Electromagnetic equations like a gourmet dish and a damn fine cup of coffee as well. I favour the wide-rimmed hat rather than sunglasses, but I may have to reconsider now. Your talk of computers reminds me of Scotty and the "transparent aluminum" scene in Star Trek IV.

Kevin: Well one has to be careful with school children, a lot of the little blighters are pyromaniacs.
 
if i remember right (it could all be my imagination) but i thought there was one episode where Mr. Scott did in fact have a lady interested...ah but his love was the ship and well we know where that goes...
 
Em, G.B. purely for the purposes of the scientific method you understand, but do you remember the name of that mouthwash?
Just asking.
Forget it.
Eh Daisy's right! There WAS an episode where Scotty nearly got his oats.
 
You have finally exhumed all my problems... still we have each other...
 
i would have no trouble procreating with scotty...or attempting to. but then, you know how i am about accents.
 
Indiscriminate weapons flashing?


I'm for it!
 
Daisy: I don't remember that episode. But there was one where he was given shore leave on Apha Sigma 4 to spend time with a girl he'd been fawning over.

Dr Maroon 'Bain de Bouche' by Dr Frenchkiss is a top-of-range product. Rich single women buy it for their gigolos.

Mutley: Exhumed your problems? Do you mean I have dug up your bones?

Kara: I would have cast you as the junior officer who got spanked by Spock for insubordination. You can't be sassy
just because he's a Vulcan. Scotty would have put you on his knee and read you stories.

Trish: That's great, but put on a pair of safety goggles first!
 
"For all his macho talk about warp drive, I can’t remember Scotty ever getting laid." Knowing what a couple of engineer friends of mine are like, and what they would be like in bed, I wouldn't be surprised!
 
Oooh sign me up then for his man-juices. I am very keen on the idea of having a kid on my own and what better then with a genius guy's stuff :p
 
Maroon is a drunk Quatermass - just what this or any other country needs. I salute your salute to him, GB. Any blog that mentions Fokkers gets a link, I reckon.

The first student I met at college was a engineer. After shaking hands, I asked him what he was reading.

"Mechanickle engi-bluddy-neering," replied Sheffield's "Para" Pete Eastwood.

I took to the breed immediately. Mid-word swearing is no mean skill.

Lest they should get above themselves, let us remember the words of Wendy "You would, wouldn't you?" Cope:

Engineers' Corner

Why isn't there an Engineers' Corner in Westminster Abbey? In Britain we've always made more fuss of a ballad than a blueprint ... How many schoolchildren dream of becoming great engineers?

Advertisement placed in The Times by the Engineering Council

We make more fuss of ballads than of blueprints --
That's why so many poets ends up rich,
While engineers scrape by in cheerless garrets.
Who needs a bridge or dam? Who needs a ditch?

Whereas the person who can write a sonnet
Has got it made. It's always been the way,
For everybody knows that we need poems
And everybody reads them every day.

Yes, life is hard if you choose engineering --
You're sure to need another job as well;
You'll have to plan your projects in the evenings
Instead of going out. It must be hell.

While well-heeled poets ride around in Daimlers,
You'll burn the midnight oil to earn a crust,
With no hope of a statue in the Abbey,
With no hope, even, of a modest bust.

No wonder small boys dream of writing couplets
And spurn the bike, the lorry and the train.
There's far too much encouragement for poets --
That's why the country's going down the drain.

 
That is the most beautiful thing I ever read.
Thanks Boyo
 
GB you have the most interesting friends.... x
 
Clea: Could there be women who fantasize about being serviced like a machine? I have heard of stranger things.

Sabrina: Dr Maroon is a genius of applied mathematics but I still think he ought to pay you to have his babies. $100,000 per baby sounds fair to me.

Mr Boyo: What Wendy Cope didn't realise, in penning that sarcastic ballad, is that some engineers are also poets. I refer you to Dr Maroon's archives.

Dr Maroon: It must have moved you very deeply, Dr, for you did not reply to Sabrina's offer.

Nursemyra: They're quite a bunch!
 
Stop this politically correct Madness now Mr Bananas. Why should the Lesbians get discounted techno jiz ???.
 
incredible stuff, sugar...but then i do have a tenderness for all things scientific ;-) xoxox
 
Indeed scientists have gone too far. They are mucho loco bananas for coco puffs and ga-ga crazy for ten-thousand-pounds of gorilla poop!

I have updated my post regarding the science experiment on celebrity twins who were separated at birth, feel free to examine the specimens, but please wear the provided rubber gloves;
http://krapsody.blogspot.com/2008/07/separated-at-birth.html

 
Beast: You've got to encourage and nurture talent, Beast. Lesbians instinctively know how to raise engineers.

Savannah: I'm glad to hear it!

Static: Are you confusing scientists with Frankenstein's monster?
 
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