'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack got a tumour from a candle stick...'

Science has taught us this week that if zombies were real, you would likely be killed by them. And now we've found out that if the zombies didn't get you, then candles would. That's right. Candles. What next, 'Glade Plug-ins cause diabetes'? According to research at the clearly underlit University of South Carolina our humble waxy friend has become the newest member of the League of Extraordinary Cancer Causers (along with just about anything you like and a few of the things you don't). Which explains why everyone died so young in the age before lightbulbs. Well, that and all the horse joyriders. It's also a sign that I should probably give up my ten a day candle habit (I've been meaning to quit for years, honest). Because suddenly aromatherapists have become fragrant deathmongers, birthday cakes are ticking timebombs, romantic dinners are death traps - that may as well be a stick of dynamite in the top of that wine bottle! Lighting a candle in church? What, do you want to meet God so soon? Put down that match! These are the new cancer sticks people, and it's time we took our lawsuit to Big Candle, because our children's lives are at stake! There are youngsters out there lighting up and enjoying the mellow yellow flames that these death-cylinders produce as a side-effect of their lethal cancer rays! Candles - the Flickering Killer!!!

Except no, they're not.

Patently, any 'merit' this research has is immediately rendered moot because it's fuelled by scaremongering of the highest order. And in an age where newspapers seem to scream that apparently 'everything can give you cancer!', our attitude as a society has become so nonchalant to threats that adding another thing to the list really doesn't matter. Besides, the risk of getting cancer from a candle is so galactically low that it's still debateable. I mean, this was one piece of research done by one university - you need many more independent studies and a whole lot of data sampling to even start to determine whether candles might be a threat to health. But what really pisses me off is that once again Science is seen by the general public to be wasting time and funds on subjects and areas that are of no concern or help to society. It's not really the Scientific community's fault - I mean, yes, zombie and candle research are a waste of time, but it is only a small part of a much bigger endeavour. The problem lies with the Media cherrypicking these stories for want of a cheap public health scare and to sell more papers to an already worried public. For instance, did you know that this week scientists in Maryland came one step closer to generating synthetic life? Or that a new flood-resistant rice plant that could feed millions has been developed? Or that strains of life-generating amino acids have been found on a comet out in deep space? That's all real, impressive, boundary-breaking science and if you haven't heard about it it's not your fault, they're just not stories that a newspaper can practically apply to terrify you and your kids.
Candles aren't going to give you cancer, but if they did then I'm just glad there are proper scientists out there working on cures. So, South Carolina researchers, get the wax out of your ears, give your matches back to mummy, and go help them.

Sheer Lunarcy...

Don't expect that next hot date with Earth for a while, Moon...

Happy 40th Anniversary, Moon Landing!


1972 was the last time Man planted his great space-wellington on the lunar surface, and since that time the Moon's been waiting for us to call back. Seriously, it's like we went on a few dates with the Moon (6 in all), told it we were going to call it back soon and then never did. In effect, we dumped the Moon.


Amid the celebrations of Man's Greatest Achievement, the question of when, or if at all, Man will go back to the Moon has rumbled around, provoking the same old arguments that it always does when 'space exploration' is mentioned. People claim its too expensive, too environmentally damaging, and that the billions it would cost could be better spent on education and fighting poverty. Well those people can shut up and sit back down. You see, we need to go back there and then we need to go further, to Mars and beyond, regardless of the cost, because it's what the Human race does. We explore. We went from the cave and saw the horizon and wondered what was beyond it, and we've been wondering what's over the next horizon ever since. As Sam Seaborn says in 'The West Wing', "The history of Humanity is hung on a timeline of exploration". Take that away and we just begin to stagnate. I think we've been stagnating for too long. We've come a long way for a bunch of monkeys and we need to keep going. Money is not an excuse to stop. Planet Earth needs an ego boost - a reminder that the human race is not just about a life of bills and beer and swine flu and recycling, and the constant self-flagellationary thinking that every move we make is hurting the planet or wasting time or money. For too long all the wars and climate change and poverty have made us think we're failing and that we should be ashamed of ourselves. Everything on the news makes us feel like we should be ashamed of ourselves. I think we need to be reminded what a brilliant little species we can be when we really put our minds to it, and I think we need to have some hope that Humanity isn't atrophying, but rather progessing and actually working to shape it's own future and doing things it can be proud of. Travelling to the Moon or Mars, not just orbiting Earth in a giant International Tin Can, is the way to remind us of all that we do best. So what if it's expensive? You can't put a price on exploration. Heck, they can have a couple of hundred off me if they really need it that badly. It'd all be worth it just to see that great space-wellington stand on the Martian surface. Or maybe, just maybe, we could use it to have that 7th date with the Moon...


So, this has turned from a funny little cartoon to an article on the boundless exploration of the human race. And if you ever needed a speech that would persuade you to go back to the Moon, this is it. The one that started it all off in the first place. JFK's 'We Choose to Go to the Moon' speech is one of the finest pieces of oratory in all of history and it's well worth a listen. It sends shivers up my back every time I hear it.





Right, now if you'll excuse me I'm off to buy my space-suit and a crate of freeze-dried ice cream.

Show Me The Money!

Where are the Jackson and Madoff Millions?

I don't normally cover the news, just rant at it, but it's been a helluva week, with two particularly big stories. One of them is the death of Michael Jackson, the other is the 150 year sentence doled out to uber-conman and all round shit, Bernie Madoff (I think that's the first Michael Jackson sentence this week not to also feature the phrase 'King of Pop'). I laughed out loud and did a little dance when Madoff was sentenced today, given as much time in prison as I think Lex Luthor got the last time he was up before a judge. Sometimes justice fails you and shakes your faith in it. This was not one of those times. Frankly, for all the harm he's caused, I think they should keep his corpse in its cell until the 150 years is fully served.

Anyway, what connects both these stories? The answer: Money. Specifically, the location of large quantities of it. Both Madoff and Jackson's millions have been talked about a lot, because there are a lot of people with a lot of reasons for wanting some of it. In the case of Jackson, fans who bought tour tickets are wanting their money back, while there's also been media specualtion about his will and then outstanding debts and what the investors and banks are owed. Of course, Jackson's finances and missing millions have been fodder for the media for years, but only now are things coming to a head. In terms of Madoff, his £150 billion + dollar Ponzi-scheme has left millions of people out of pocket or in debt, and understandably they want it back. Question is, where is it? Here no one is quite sure. Such was the complexity and length of his scheme that it seems impossible that any or many will get their hard-earned money back.

And so it seemed apt to draw this cartoon, designed to represent everything I just talked about and has been discussed ad infinitum in the press. Where's the money? No one knows. It may as well be hiding.

No need for 'oinkment' for us - our rashers have been cured...

Still alive?

Of course you are. You’re a reasonable and intelligent person. But if you stocked up on canned goods and shotgun ammunition so that you could live in and defend your hermetically sealed bio-bubble then you are a fool, but I’ll forgive you seeing as there’s been such a fuss. Last Sunday the news would have you believe we were in the twilight of the human race and that by next weekend all that would be left on the face of the Earth would be an army of the mutated undead. It’s been interesting watching the rolling news channels struggle to keep the story alive and at a scarily dramatic pitch with the most ridiculous headlines and ludicrously lame breaking news. My favourite moment so far was when a newsreader, in an intensely serious voice, said ‘Fifteen people in Britain now have Swine Flu’. Fifteen! Fifteen thousand? Fifteen million? What’s that...? Oh, just fifteen. Fifteen. Right. Just sit back and think about that headline and how ridiculous it is: fifteen people with a mild flu. Not hospitalised, not dying, not particularly contagious, nothing that a mug of Lemsip wouldn’t help. It’s a ridiculously low number for a virus that has proved to be as effective as a chocolate fireguard in killing those outside of Mexico. And the death estimates in Mexico have actually been revised and lowered. I’m looking forward to more headlines like this in the future: ‘Ten people in the UK are known to be currently suffering from constipation’, ‘An elderly man in Fife has a limp – could it spread to other people?’. The best (and in a way most sobering) fact I heard this week was that if you go into hospital with Swine Flu, you’re more likely to die of an MRSA infection. You don’t get coverage of the W.H.O doing live web-conferences on that though...

Anyway, unless I suddenly contract Swine Flu this is my last post about it as I’m rather sick of it (no pun intended). No doubt some new, terrifying story will soon come along to replace the virus, and if it doesn't then the news will go back to reporting on it's perennial favourite topic of the Recession. Still, on the bright side the face mask market is doing well in the economic downturn. One hundred shares in the SneezeGuard Masks Co. please...

"It's the End of the World as we know it, and I feel Swine..."

The Big Bad Wolf stopped at the Straw House and listened to the sounds from inside. Suddenly he didn't feel the desire to 'Huff and Puff'...

According to today's news you and I and everyone we know should mindlessly panic because of a potential Swine Flu pandemic. On Sky News there has been dramatic music, computer graphics, worried-looking experts and news readers giving it there all to scare the living daylights out of you. 'Pigs will kill you!!!' apparently. In the end I put on a DVD (Devil Wears Prada - people who know me well will understand why) because I was getting angry at the seeming enjoyment the news was taking in covering every single worrying detail about how a piggy virus that has killed 80-something people (out of a country of something like 25 million. And compared to that number I wonder how many people died on Mexico's roads or passed away from Cancer in the past week?) could, possibly, maybe, perhaps, kill untold millions. It was as though they were getting off on the fetishism of scaring people with what could happen and not what is actually occuring. I've now decided not to pay attention ot the news. I mean, we've seen this all before with SARS and Bird Flu. I remember being told by the print and TV media, who love to indulge in a bit of doomsday talk, that half of us would be killed by SARS or sneezing birds and the rest of us would have to live in hermetically-sealed bunkers. Years later, we're still standing and eating the chicken.

If/when the Swine Flu death numbers start getting worryingly big (I'm talking about hundreds of thousands across the entire Earth), then I'll start to pay attention. But for now the news can sit and swivel. Under a hundred people have died and many who have suffered from it have lived. And this is out of a planetary population of 6 billion. The human race isn't going to end just yet my friends. I'm not going to get dragged into the scaremongering and neither should you. Millions of people die every day from far more virulent and vile dieases that have been around for much longer but aren't as 'dramatic' to cover. So just switch off the news, sit back with some sausages, and take it easy. After all, it's Sunday.