Collider scope
Sometime on Wednesday, scientists in Switzerland at CERN – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research – are going to turn on the world's most powerful particle accelerator and begin to conduct atomic experiments which could help solve some of the riddles of our galaxy's creation. Either that, or they're going to make a small black hole which might gradually expand to swallow our planet and destroy us all; it depends on who you believe.
Of course, the chances of the latter are so infinitesimally small that you're more likely to win Powerball several times over while being struck by a meteorite on Friday the 13th, but that hasn't stopped some science sceptics and doomsday fearmongers from trying to derail the accelerator project. Undoubtedly these people would have been happy persecuting Galileo, and it's the demystification of our provenance that probably drives them nuts. Anything that sees mankind encroaching on God's realm – the manipulation of life, etc – is considered a Pandora's box we should best leave alone. I'm still making up my mind about how we should proceed with genetic experimentation, but I generally think our human quest for knowledge should be encouraged rather than hindered.
Admittedly, scientists have set loose some terrible things with their research, but the suffering they've alleviated would surely have to outweigh the suffering they've helped spread, wouldn't it? I'm thinking of the benefits of vaccines versus the victims of nuclear weapons, and so on. Maybe that's like comparing apples and oranges, but the practical, useful flow-on effects of the knowledge gleaned from the Large Hadron Collider are likely to be manifold, and worth whatever small risks they entail. Plus, it's a further way of understanding the Creator through his creation, if you believe in that sort of thing; and that's as respectable and worthy as religion, philosophy or anything else that helps us make sense of our existence in a vast, hostile, and completely improbable universe.
From a cartoonist's point of view, I was thinking about all this and wondering what might have happened the last time a sentient species reached our level of technology. Maybe creation is an infinite, self-perpetuating loop that goes on and on forever, and there are no ultimate answers to the question of how it all began.
That itself would be a fitting punchline to the cosmic joke that is life.
Forget for a second that the US government's bailout of its largest mortgage holders is likely to ease fears in the sharemarket and calm edgy financier nerves, or that the US taxpayers are likely to recoup their money in the long run. Isn't the real issue behind this story the way that Americans have lived beyond their means – in almost every quantifiable way – for so long? Dodgy lending decisions by banks have helped lead to the current housing market crisis, but if these institutions never suffer the full consequences of their stupid actions, then what incentive do they have to change them? Same for the masses.
Everyone in the US counts on the government to bail out the faulty financial systems when they go wrong, even if the people in charge have long fled with their inflated salary packages and cashed-in shares and are living the high life somewhere else. It's perverse. And the idea of a government several TRILLION dollars in debt propping up anything is laughable; it's like, well, a person with an anvil for a parachute trying to arrest someone else's free fall.
My other idea was to have a lifeguard with a ball and chain around his ankle rescuing some struggling swimmers, but I liked this one better. It was more dramatic and interesting, and funny in a kind of slapstick "Road Runner" sort of way.
Next, one of my favourite cartoons recently. I'd had the idea for an old west showdown rattling in my head for a while, but it wasn't until I combined the classic movie High Noon with Winston Peters' equally classic "No" sign that it all came together.
Let the shootout commence!
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Mike,
The particle accelerator cartoon made me laugh out loud when I read it... good work!! Spot on. :D
- Chris
At first I was wondering what the heck you were on about with the Hadron Collider, so I had to go and do some research.... I did laugh once I'd figured it out tho ;)
See so your cartoons are not just funny, but informative :D
G'day Mike, you write about reading books on webcomics - can you recommend any? Two American books are available that I have seen - How to Make Webcomics and Webcomics: Tools and Techniques for Digital Cartoons. Cheers Dave
Good one on the Glenn vs. Peters.
Here is some interesting reading on the highly probable US hyperinflation event, suspected due by some by 2010.
Hey Mike, I just found this while stumbling around the net - http://www.sciencenewsreview.com/accidental-intelligent-design/
I don't see any credits or anything given to you...
RE: http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/fall3.jpg
Technically, the US Treasury holds nothing at all due to the debt problem ongoing. I suppose a few moths live at the treasury, but there is nothing for them to feed on. No mice either, they died due to starvation.
The US Gold reserves are only around 290 billion ... and all precious metal reserves could not be more than 500 billion.
If there is a run on Gold and Silver, goosing the price of Gold up to 3000 EUR to 4000 EUR per troy ounce (grams?) ... the US could sell off its entire reserve of precious metals. Yet, I don't expect this to happen until hyperinflation hits ... it is only ~17% now.
Still, I doubt that such a financial markets move would fix the debt (governmental) coupled with the debt (mortgage market). There is a 50% probability of Wiemar hyperinflation in the US ... we are just at the lower parts of the shockfront of the pressure bubble.
With 50% of the population not in the consumption loop (in a consumption not production economy), and almost all productive capacity being moved away from the US -- the pressure wave physics model that models Wiemar hyperinflation may come into force.
One of these has the shockfront / pressure wave explanation -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMY3aJwhfqg (ignore the rhetoric) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPitcRcIT7U (ignore the rhetoric) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw7CwhfKUt4 (may happen in US)