O MIGHTY RAY

Based on a true story. Maybe. We don't even know anymore.

BECAUSE OF THUMBS

If you sometimes worry about the world and your place in it, just think of this diagram, which conclusively proves that one naked man is better than anything that lives, swims, floats, crawls or scuttles in the ocean. Why? Thumbs, that's why. Thumbs. 

YOU CAN GET IT IF YOU REALLY WANT

Work continues with the training of our new keyboard player. Next week we start him on the mini Moog.

CLASSIFIED

ANY IDEA?

Answers on graph paper, please, to: SCIENCE, LONDON, ENGLAND. Science cannot return your answers, but there is a Nobel Prize for the best one. 

SEEING IS DECEIVING

There is no greater fun to be had in the world than reading a book whilst wearing 3D glasses, unless it's smoking crack in a library. 

This is R.L Gregory, Professor of Bionics in the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception at the University of Edinburgh. Yes, that does make us feel bad about our paltry academic record and now we want revenge.

THE HARD STARE OF SCIENCE

These plants have no right to privacy, science is being done. The fellow second to right isn't actually pointing at anything specific, he's just showing off his signet ring. Oh, and surely there is a set of identical twins in the picture, thinking that they can fool us by standing in different corners? We've spotted you. How do YOU like being under the big microscope thingy?

A TYPICAL TOMTIT SESSION

Our latest recording is coming along nicely, thank you. It's about pyramids, and their power. We'll let you know when it's done.

BONES ARE GOOD

NOW, SCIENCE NOW

"Hallucinations without drugs, you say? Right, you have exactly thirty seconds to convince us - after that, we're calling security to have you forcibly removed"

NOW, SCIENCE NOW

The inevitable return of 'Science Now'...because how many times on this weblog do we get to say 'back by popular demand'?

NOW, SCIENCE NOW

Somewhere along the line, the TOMTIT archive has managed to accrue around three thousand copies of this marvellous Marshall Cavendish publication. It will be our ongoing pleasure to share a few of the covers with you. All you have to do is look. If that's not too much trouble, that is.  

TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE; AN INFINITE NUMBER OF HEADS IS PREFERABLE

Further to the post below, it's worth pointing out that TOMTIT has been conducting experimental psychical research for some nine years now, at enormous cost and with inconclusive results. 

On the plus side, people have stopped dying, and this has led to enormous reductions in our waste disposal bill. On the negative side, there are still far too many nose-bleeds, ear-bleeds and eye-bleeds happening, and poor Fearlono has been in two irreversible comas. 

This kid doesn't look too happy, granted, but then he's a selfish little twerp. The discomfort he is going through on a daily basis isn't for his benefit, it's for all mankind. Do e-mail us if you'd like to sponsor him. Does six quid a month sound reasonable?

Our Bible is John L. Randall’s 'Parapsychology and The Nature of Life'. We’ve never read it, but the cover is great and it is subtitled ‘A Scientific Appraisal’ ,so it’s bound to be spot on. Sure, there could have been an infinite number of heads in the illustration but that’s hardly John L. Randall’s fault, unless he did the illustration in which case it is. 

The chapter titles are brilliant: The Descent of Man; Life In The Test Tube; The Existential Vacuum; Psi In The Space Age; Mechanism In The Melting Pot and many, many, many others.

Top secret work in our soundproof science dungeon continues, and we will not give up until we find irrefutable and incontrovertible proof of our theory that everyone is sort of psychic. But then you probably already knew that.

We feel we’re on the verge of a breakthrough. We have done for ages. 

THE 'E' IS FOR EXPERIMENTAL

Experimental Psychical Research. That's the best kind, isn't it?

This is Robert H. Thouless. He has kind eyes, which leads us to believe that his experiments were moderately humane, but his hair seems to be saying 'psychotic sadist', so we don't know what to think.

COMMON PROBLEMS IN THE KIRKPLACE

If you have a boss who doesn't know the first thing about astronomy or physics and instead spends all their time copping off with aliens and robots and junior members of staff, which is really unprofessional, actually, but he gets away with it every time, and all the ideas he presents as his in meetings came from you, and you do all the work for half the pay and none of the credit and don't have time to cop off with anyone and you even had to buy your own coffee at your one to one and all the wiggy bastard said was that you were 'doing okay, really' before moaning about how lonely it was at the top and pushing a load more of his shit onto your desk and then swanning off thinking he's great but without realising that his top is far too tight and lots of people think he's a fat twat - then this is for you.     

SHORT CIRCUIT OF OVERBURDENED SYNAPSES

A favourite short story from William S. Burroughs' quite incredible 'Exterminator' (1973). It's brimming with really good science.

"JOHNNY 23"

hillside over the sea. man sitting there on a cane seat . . .he is dressed in old-fashioned puttees green sport coat of English cut he has a sandy mustache stained with tobacco pale blue eyes . . .near him we now see several convulsed forms, the closest a few feet away outstretched hand clutching a handful of grass . . . the camera pans out convulsed corpses to the sky back to the man sitting there on his cane seat . . .the man takes a chicken sandwich out of a wicker lunch basket . . . "safe at last" he says and starts eating his sandwich . . .the man you see here is Doctor Lee . . . Doctor John Lee . . . he was a sensitive man and it lacerated him to walk streets and enter restaurants where he encountered living organisms manifesting wills different from and in some cases flatly antagonistic to his own . . . "the situation is little short of intolerable" . . . Rock Ape waiter there with the wrong wine . . . he was a timid man in a way you see and not able to fix the waiter with Mandrill eyes and ugly American snarl . . . "bring me red wine you hairy assed Rock Ape or I drink it from your throat!" . . . now the doctor was a man of independent means and could usually avoid such disturbing incidents but the possibility was always there . . . this disturbed him and he was a man who did not like to be disturbed . . . he decided to end the whole distasteful thing once and for all by turning everyone into himself . . . this he proposed to do by a virus an image concentrate of himself that would spread waves of tranquility in all directions until the world was a fit place for him to live . . . he called it the "beautiful disease" . . .his first attempts to activate the image meal failed . . . he realized of course that to administer a dead or weakened strain of the beautiful Lee virus would invite the disaster of mass inoculation . . . he had to be quite sure you understand . . . some of his "canine preparations" as he called test cases died in quite unpleasant ways that disturbed him for he was a humane man and did not like to be disturbed so these unworthy vessels only increased his resolve to make a better world . . . 

one day it occurred to him if perhaps the image meal were radioactive . . . he painted a culture of image meal with radium paint and put it in an iron box covered on the outside with layers of human skin and now he chuckled "let it steep" and made himself a cup of tea . . . he finished his tea and opened the box . . . "ladies and gentlemen of planet earth introducing 'Johnny 23'" . . . his cat hissed made an abortive attempt to walk on its hind legs and fell in convulsions . . . in its dying eyes he read an almost human hatred . . . he attributed the death of his cat to a short circuit of overburdened synapses occasioned by a too rapid conversion to the human condition . . . "now we must find a worthy vessel" . . . remember the good doctor was a humane man who did not like to harm anyone because it disturbed him to do so and he was a man who did not like to be disturbed . . . he had convinced himself that "Johnny 23" would simply remove from the planet hostile alien forces manifesting themselves through other people that this would come about through peaceful penetration in the course of which no lives would be lost . . . "Johnny 23" would simply make friends of everyone . . . the doctor was not a man who argued with himself . . . the first public appearance of "Johnny 23" demonstrated a miscalculation . . . worthy vessels clutched at an often imaginary mustache and fell in convulsions looking at some invisible presence black hate from dying eyes . . . "Johnny 23" was one hundred percent fatal . . . the good doctor had a spot of bother a narrow escape in fact when the worthy vessels found out who "Johnny 23" is . . . fortunately the epidemic was well advanced by that time and "Johnny 23" finished the job . . . he finishes his sandwich and licks the grease off his fingers . . . he puts a cigarette in a stained bone holder . . . he sits there smoking . . . it is very peaceful there on the hillside nothing to disturb him as far as the eyes can see he gets up folds his cane seat and walks down a path toward the sea . . . his boat is moored by the pier . . . it is a small boat and he can handle it alone . . . last awning flaps on the pier . . . last man here now.