Xoggoth guide to science and technology

All xoggoth science is based on thorough research lasting at least half a minute. On occasions I will even spend up to a whole 5 minutes on the internet or looking in my copy of "Hutchinson Childrens Encyclopaedia 1987", showing that there is no limit to the sacrifices I am prepared to make to benefit mankind. Certain "facts" in these sources that do not fit my theories are clearly wrong and the products of a blinkered establishment or even worse, the dishonest statements of corrupt scientists in the pay of vested interests.

A solution to global warming

Since CO2 is produced by burning of carbon products in oxygen we can eliminate global warming by not having oxygen. We never had any global warming before Priestley discovered oxygen.

There should be an immediate campaign by all leading nations to bring back Phlogiston.

How to evade speed cameras

The film used in these devices is cheap and of low quality, with only barely adequate ability to discriminate between different colours. According to my rigorous calculations it will be unable to distinguish your vehicle registration number if you drive through the trap at only 46.3% of the speed of light. The resulting doppler shift will darken the yellow or white surround of your number plate sufficiently to ensure that the camera will be unable to distinguish the black lettering.

PS. The above advice should in no way be taken as an encitement to break the law.

Health scares

Too many scientists make a living by creating health scares - smoking causes lung cancer, too much salt gives you high blood pressure etc etc. It is all part and parcel of the nanny state. What is quite evident is that, until they came up with these stories, all these things that are now so bad for you were perfectly safe or even beneficial. For example, asbestos used to be safe enough provided you did not breath in large quantities of the dust. (Even that advice was clearly the thin end of the wedge) Nowadays, smoking even a tiny bit of it or sprinkling just a few grains on your cornflakes in the morning will give you lung cancer.

We should make these scientists come up with more positive theories so we can return to living in a safe world.

Food Additives

Long term, there is no need to worry about effects of additives or residual pesticides in our food. Assuming the theory of evolution is correct we will soon evolve so that, instead of these things being harmful, they will be beneficial or even vital to our health.

In 100,1000 years time, anyone not having the necessary daily intake of 2-3 Dimetho-benzo-paracetyl-triazanate will develop rickets.

Darwin's theory is not entirely convincing. Certainly one can see how a characteristic that conveys an immediate advantage will be self selective, for example, a predator that has longer legs and is a bit faster than his fellows will catch more prey and be more likely to survive lean times. But how does it explain long beaks on humming birds? A long beak that is half an inch too short to reach the nectar is no more use than a little one that is two inches too short. Are we supposed to believe that they had a long term plan?

We at the world renowned xoggoth institute have come up with a much more convincing explanation that works in every case. Fashion. Elephants developed long trunks because, for several epochs, long noses were the in-thing. The male proto-elephants with the shortest noses were thought to look nerdy by the females and never got the chance to mate.

Contamination

While investigating the problems of bacterial contamination of foodstuffs in public bars and restaurants , health researchers have recently discovered other strange contaminants which could not at first be identified. Extensive DNA matching has now tracked down the source to one organism, Dosidicus Gigas, the Giant Squid. Scientists believe that these creatures, by far the most intelligent of all invertebrates, have been regularly moonlighting in bars and fast food restaurants throughout much of Southeast England.

Another solution to global warming

This one is so simple I cannot imagine why it is not in use. Simply remove the Carbon Dioxide from the emissions of power stations. All we need to do is pass the combustion gases through sprays of lime solution. The UK has plenty of chalk and limestone. There should be an immediate program of investment in lime kilns to produce the lime we need.

The UK space industry

The UK industry has gone nowhere since the days of Blue Streak. This is the government's fault for not providing the proper legislative framework. If they had made some time in their busy parliamentary schedule (of increasing taxes, finding new ways to waste taxpayers' money, passing repressive laws and lining their own pockets) they would have repealed the law of gravity. The UK would now be streets ahead of the competition.

Moon landings

Apparently the launch of the first successful moon rocket from Cape Canaveral was made when the moon was in the first quarter. This was idiotic and NASA really did not deserve to succeed. If the launch had been made at full moon, its gravitational force would obviously have been four times stronger and much less fuel would have been needed to get there. Conversely, they should have waited until the moon had waned fully before starting back. Naturally, for this scheme to work they would have needed to land on the bit of the moon that is always there. After extensive study, the xoggoth institute has determined that this is the lower left hand corner.

The truth about dust mites

We are often told that our houses are infested with dust mites and that these tiny creatures are the cause of ashma and other childhood allergies. They embelish this with revolting details like the "fact" that the average pillow is composed of 40% by weight of dust mite droppings.

Maybe they feel safe peddling these lies because they do not expect us to check, but we at the Xoggoth Institute have. We have hot air central heating which speads dust everywhere and such a lamentable attitude to cleanliness that there are more cobwebs in Xoggoth Towers than in Dracula's outside toilet. We should have had billions of dust mites. Armed with a microscope, we went dust mite hunting. We shook rugs, brushed carpets, banged pillows and after over an hour found - one dust mite. There are more White Tigers in Siberia than there are dust mites in the average household, they are practically an endangered species.

Why would anyone lie about such a thing? We are still working on that, but our strong suspicions are that the poor little dust mite is a convenient scapegoat for the childhood illnesses that are actually caused by radiation from government monitoring devices. More on this soon.

A solution to the world shortage of minerals

With the growing standard of living in China and India, it is clear that the world supply of many resources is totally inadequate. The problem would be eased if we could recycle more but far too much of the valuable minerals still ends up dispersed in landfill sites. The solution came to me when I thought back to my O level chemistry days. You could tell which elements or compounds were present in a solution using chromatography, they separated out into distinct bands. Therefore one solution to our problem would be to dissolve landfill sites in huge vats of acid and stick enormous bits of blotting paper in them. My calculations show that a 36m high by 5m wide piece of blotting paper would be needed for every 25 tonnes of rubbish. Let it dry and snip along the bands to get back the iron, tin, copper etc.

A solution to the world shortage of gas

Then there is the energy problem, most critical at present is gas supply. But hang on, they are telling us that global warming is at "tipping point" because the warming of the Artic tundra and subsea methane hydrates will release trillions of metric tons of methane into the atmosphere, exacerbating the acceleration in temperature and leading to a catastrophic positive feedback situation. Surely the solution to the energy crisis is obvious? Must I think of everything? All we need to do is cover the Artic tundra with clingfilm and tap the gas off at the edges. There are a few problems that will need to be solved, for example, reindeer will need to have woolly socks fitted so that their hooves don't tear the clingfilm, but I think this is very practical. The subsea methane would be even easier, we could catch the bubbles in lots of old Tesco bags. No pipelines needed either, they could just sell bags of gas direct to the public. Tie the bag opening around the special bag connection on your cooker, lower the gas bag weight onto it and away you go.

Military Aircraft

Not a hardware engineeer myself but I see the problems the guys I work with have to design electronics that can withstand the rigours of modern, especially military, aircraft. A major problem is the huge g forces on manoeuvring that can challenge even the most high quality parts. But when I looked at what they were producing, immensely robust items with heavy aluminium casings, solid mountings and heavily bound and sleeved wiring, I could not help but laugh at their stupidity. I have now done further research and find the same idiocy is applied to the mechnical parts such as wings and engines.

Good lord! surely everyone knows the old adage about grass bending in the wind. This is completely the wong way to go! All major aircraft parts, including the wings and engines, should be attached to all the other parts with long elastic bands. That way, when the aircraft changes direction, instead of the vital components being immediately subject to huge g forces, they initially stay where they are before being accelerated at an even rate by the elastic to eventually catch up with the rest of the craft at their leisure. They may therefore be much less robust and much cheaper.

I have written to the MOD outlining my ideas and have no doubt that very soon the Xoggoth Institute will be awarded a contract to build the next generation of fighter aircraft. We have already started to build up our collection of old washing machine bits from laybys in anticipation.