Scientific link found between aviation ban and cellphones

The aviation and mobile communications industries are all abuzz today, after scientists found conclusive proof linking cellphone use to aeroplane crashes and disasters.

“We’ve cracked it,” said Ian Turfurince, Senior Researcher at the Academy of Aviation Studies. “People have long been saying that cellphones don’t cause plane crashes, but finally we can categorically say, ‘Actually, they do.’ And the reason for this is something we’d never even considered.”

According to research conducts by the team from AAS, cellphones are banned from planes not because their specific electromagnetic wavelength and emissions cause dangerous interference with aviation equipment and other such sensitive devices, but rather simply because of people’s fucking loud and irritating conversations.

“Think about it,” explained the 600-page research report, “when you’re on a plane, knees braced against your chest, the kid behind you kicking your seat, some blasted baby screaming its stupid head off four rows back, all whilst you struggle to catch half an hour of sleep on your overnighter to London, you’d think nothing could make it worse.”

“But science has shown that, if your neighbour was, in mid-flight, able to crack open his cellphone and blather on about some pointless bullshit, continuously asking ‘can you hear me now? Can you hear me NOW?’, you can imagine that it can, indeed, get much, much worse.”

Researchers now say that planes are a lot more likely to suffer crashes due to the simple fact that pilots can’t take another goddamn second of your inane, pointless blithering.

And pilots agree.

“It’s true,” said flight officer Nina Leven. “I hear people talking in too-loud conversations in restaurants with their business- or romantic partners, and it makes me so glad that, at that moment, I am not responsible for the lives of 96 passengers and a 7-man flight crew. People need to realise their actions have heavy ramifications for those around them: if we were to allow cellphones in-flight and you say something like “no, you hang up” fourteen times in a voice so loud that even the paupers back in economy are able to feel the vomit rise in their throats, there may be unforeseen consequences.”

However, researchers now say that this is just the first step in ensuring aeroplanes are a safer, less irritating environment for all.

“It’s certainly a start, but there’s still much work to do,” said Turfurince. “Now we just need to find a scary, unscientific link between complex aviation equipment and other potential safety hazards on board: such as that guy who keeps farting and acting like it’s not him, screaming babies, and that fat dude who fights tooth and nail to have both armrests for himself.”

Scientists on brink of finding autism vaccine

We are on the edge of a better tomorrow – or so say scientists from the National Centre For Disease Control. Virologist and bacteriologists have released a statement that has stunned the world, saying they are “on the very precipice” of finally finding a vaccine against vaccine-based-autism.

“It’s been a long, difficult road, but we really do think we’re about to crack it,” said Dr Robert Harrolson of the NSCD. “It’s our hope that, one day, our children will be able to get vaccinated without an unnecessary, scientifically unfounded, clinically disproved, medically discredited fear of developing autism.”

Already, clinical trials have shown huge success – in the form of first human test subject Billy Henderson, who, for the entirety of the tests remained “100% free from autism”.

“Despite having received every possible vaccine – against things you really should fear your child getting, like Polio or the Whooping Cough – little Billy didn’t get autism,” explained Dr Harrolson, a hopeful smile on his face. “Yeah, sure, neither did about 99% of the worldwide control group of millions of children who also got vaccine, but we don’t like to make baseless claims that there’s a link between those two separate statistics.”

Dr Harrolson now believes that the vaccine, Salinine (better known by its scientific name Aqueous 1-1 monosodium-monochloride), will be commercially available for parents everywhere.

However, not all parents share his optimism.

“I’d never put that poison in my kids body,” said Crystal therapy practitioner and homeopathic expert Jennifer McCarthy. “After googling ‘bad effects of autism vaccine’ for three hours I found a single paper that says it causes some rare disease that I don’t really understand but sounds really, really terrifying.”

“Besides,” she added, “it’s my right as a parent to decide what life-threatening illness my child contracts in his life – and it’s against my religion. If God wants my child to die of an easily preventable disease, who are we to use so-called ‘scientific advances’ to stop His Divine Will?”

In spite of the stoic resistance to this possible new world-changing development, scientists remain hopeful of that this is merely the first step towards the ultimate vaccine.

"With advances like these becoming evermore prevalent, we're steadily getting closer and closer to the day we produce the greatest vaccine of them all," said Harrolson. "A vaccine against human stupidity."

NASA pledges $100b program to find intelligent life on Earth

Citing the age-old adage that “you can’t run before you’ve learnt to crawl”, the National Aeronautical Space Agency has today announced their suspension of the multi-million dollar program to find intelligent life out in space - in favour of a multi-billion dollar program to first find intelligent life on Earth.

NASA, which first started their SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) wing in the 1980s, says that it’s about time we found sentient, thinking, smart beings on our slice of the solar system.

“We know it’s a needle-in-a-haystack operation,” said NASA’s chief coordinator for the global search program SEBI (Search for Earth-Based Intelligence), Rocky Tjips. “Given our long and mentally-undeveloped history of race-based hatred, purposeful environmental destruction, war, ethnic cleansing, the News24 comments section and One Direction being a thing that people actively enjoy, we realise that this task may even be more difficult than scanning the billions upon billions of stars for signs of intelligent life – but we’re up for the challenge.”

“After all,” he added, “how can we possibly start looking for intelligent life out there, if we haven’t even found any down here?”

Scientists now say that intelligent life could
theoretically exist on Earth.

And while some detractors argue that human beings do show isolated, tiny sparks of intellect, NASA holds firm that, given the circumstances, these claims are exaggerated at the least and statistical outliers at the most.

“Yeah, people do throw around names like ‘Einstein’ or ‘Hawkings’ or even ‘Newton’, but honestly, just weigh that up against the billions of morons these guys rub shoulders with,” rebuked Tjips. “Seriously, we used to think that the moon was a god, and that radium was a great pick-me up tonic and ingredient in makeup,” he stressed. “These guys were just huge statistical blips, outweighed by the multitudinous nincompoops who, say, think Fox News gives balanced reportage, or think that Ebola is a real threat to anyone visiting the Southern African regions.”

The search, says Tjips, is now on, and despite initial negative results, he says they’re confident they’ll find something soon.

“We’ve gone through the comment sections of most major websites, almost all of my Facebook feed, most Instagram accounts, and thousands of celebrity Twitter handles,” he said. “Sure, it’s a tiresome process of elimination, and yes, everything we’ve found just confirms our belief that human beings are primordial, cognitively underdeveloped scum, but eventually we’ll find something. I mean, it’s not like most people are so stupid it makes you blink and recoil from your screen, right? Right?”

Scientists discover new species to force into extinction

The scientific community is all atwitter today, after a small group of intrepid explorers and adventurers working in the Amazon delta discovered a new species for humankind to slowly but inevitably force into extinction.

“It’s amazing,” said leader of the French and German led expedition, Klein Match-Aange. “To be a part of the ceaseless quest to expand our knowledge of the world’s soon-to-be-naught-but-a-distant-memory-and-a-picture-in-a-yellowing-history-book species is a privilege that can we barely describe.”

The animal is reportedly a “very rare” but “equally delicate and vulnerable” sub species of distant cousins the once plentiful Howling Silver-top Lemur, which not so long ago freely roamed the extensive cattle farms and slashed-and-burned corn fields of the Amazon Farmlands.

“This little guy – which we’ve called the Blue-tipped Howling Lemur, or Marsuplius Genocidus Extinctia - is a shy, shy creature,” explained Match-Aange, recalling the difficult task of finding the elusive ‘Blue Ghost’. “Nocturnal and very skittish, finding him was a real challenge. You won’t believe how many trees we had to cut down just to get a pic of him. All that foliage, dense undergrowth and rare orchids make modern scientific endeavours like these a real nightmare.”

Our knowledge of these elusive creatures, however, is now vastly improved.

“According to preliminary scientific observations on the animal, we can say that it’s not very different from other classic species of lemur,” said the team’s sixty-page report. “While looking somewhat different to other species in this genus, it shares a very similar diet, social behaviourisms, mating habits and vulnerability to stab wounds as its other lemur brethren.”

The report added that this “probably mean[t] a shared similarity in terms of organisational hierarchy, territorial behaviour and susceptibility to broken bones, third-degree burns and bleach poisoning.”

“Whatever their exact species, these animals tend to share a few fundamental characteristics,” the report explained, “such as how thin and easily crushable its skull is, how - much like other lemurs, small apes and some similar species of exotic cats - it dies after only one or two well-aimed 9mm slugs to the back of the head, or how valuable its bones and fur are on the traditional medicines and exotic goods black markets.”

This species of lemur is now the third animal to be added this year to our list of species we’re going to utterly eradicate one by one from the surface of the planet, just after the Java Tiger (Leo Pantherus Coati Expensivus) and the White Rhino (Bohne Maykmii Erectus).

"We're a tenacious bunch, us humans, but we need to keep up the hard work," said the report. "Even now, there are probably hundreds of rare, undiscovered species out there just waiting to be decimated into total disappearance."

Pic: by Rachel Kramer licenced under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

“Some Races Better Than Others” – Institute of Race Studies

“We have to face the uncomfortable truth” –Lead Director IIRS

Controversy ruled today, after a panel of scientists and researchers at the International Institute for Race Studies confirmed a very controversial belief: that some races are inherently superior to others.

“For many years, the uncomfortable notion has been hanging around in the air, and we don’t want to stir the pot,” said Lead Researcher for the IIRS, Kay Kakay. “But when you look at the data, certain patterns begin to emerge that confirm this unpopular belief: that some races are just vastly inferior when compared to others. This isn’t just skin-deep any more. It’s fact.”

Kakay said that the decades-old liberal view – that all races were created equal and are equal in society – is just outmoded and wrong. He outlined the damning data that they had uncovered in their fact-finding mission.

“First of all, some races are shorter than others. While this isn’t the deal-breaker, it is certainly something to be cognisant of as we move forward,” he said, pointing at graphs, charts and Latin words that confirmed what he was reading was Pure Science. “Next, if we look into statistical surveys conducted with people in each of these races, they admit to certain character flaws that prop up what some consider a very ‘backward’ belief."

"For example, people in one kind of race often tend to be lazier or not as hard working as the more committed, dedicated and hard-working people in another. And in some races, even the most highly respected members of the community are eventually revealed to be nothing but a bunch of drug-addicted cheats and contemptible liars. It’s disgusting.”

The disconcerting evidence has been widely supported, at least in the South African community.

“Finally!” said a man holding braai tongs. “All this blerrie PC pussy-footing of okes too scared to not skirt around the truth. I’ve always thought some races was just utterly pointless, stupid and a waste of time, and now I know that I’ve always been right. Some races are obviously superior and deserve to be encouraged and supported.”

With all this scientific data, scientists and sociologists now admit that it is “totally permissible and indeed factually correct” to hate certain races, or prefer some races over others.

“Personally, I can’t stand those lazy bastards in the Two Oceans,” said one Johannesburg-based man. “The Comrades Marathon and the Tour de France are simply far, far superior.”

Pic: National Cancer Insititute and wikimedia commons

Longevity, healthy lifestyle potentially fatal – study

The news got scarier and the world a considerably more bleak, depressing place to live this morning, after doctors working in conjunction with medical researchers at the Institute for The Study of Dangerous and Inevitable Illnesses announced yet another way you are probably going to die.

“The first few symptoms of this disease are iniquitous and dangerous because you feel normal, like a normal, healthy sixty-to-seventy-year-old,” said Dr Koff Formiplese. “And then BOOM: you’ve got it.”

The so-called Old Age Syndrome (OAS) has been shown to affect nearly one in a thousand people, mostly senior citizens between the ages of 60 and 90. The disease has a mortality rate of 100%, and is likely to affect you or someone you know at least once in your or his or her lifetime.

“This rare medical condition has diverse and wide-ranging symptoms,” said Formiplese, “such as hair loss, flaccid and weathered skin, brittle bones, arthritis and an increased susceptibility to infection from cuts and bruises. Also, it massively degrades their driving skills, and makes them give really strange birthday presents to people. The people who have this disease carry an unacceptably elevated risk of dying and they have a much higher than ordinary chance of developing cancers, lung, bone and liver diseases, and usually have a much poorer immune system. We need to find out what is causing this terrible affliction and end it once and for all.”

To deal with the disease, many people now resort to lumping all the infected into one huge Hospice Village, where activities like tennis, water aerobics and increasingly infrequent family visits are used to provide some relief from the condition.

However, there is a silver lining.

“Though everyone who catches the disease eventually and inevitably dies, many of them live for a very long time with the disease,” said Formiplese. “You could say it’s a manageable condition. And many studies show that simply smoking a few packs of cigarettes a day, taking high doses of illegal narcotics, avoiding the gym, eating deep-fried butter... these are all proved methods for guaranteeing you don't catch OAS.”

In light of many diagnoses like these by healthcare specialists, lawyers and legal representatives now believe they have identified two of the most leading causes of OAS, and are now gathering cases and names to back up what is set to be one of the largest a class action lawsuits in the history of the world, eclipsing the comparatively meagre settlements won from tobacco giants and poisoned water suppliers.

“We now know that statistically if you spend time in a gym or in the vegetable section of a supermarket, you’re more likely to develop symptoms,” said legal professional Claus Akshin. “as such, we’re preparing litigation against the Health Industry – places like Virgin Active and other gyms – and against fruit producers, farmers and grocers who stock produce that is dangerously high in vitamins, minerals and fibre, all of which are proven to directly contribute towards OAS.”

He went on to say how these insidious farmers were exacerbating and already out-of-control problem.

“There’s apparently a greenish sticky thing called celery that actually has a negative calorie count,” said a legal expert. “What kind of sick bastard would force his clients to burn energy to eat his food?”

They are also considering the Home Shopping Network and other infomercial channels, but proving causation will be tough if not impossible.

“They say ‘Guaranteed Results’ and ‘Money-back Guarantee’ and stuff like ‘get the abs you always wanted in no time’ but we can’t really find a single example where these products have actually inflicted one of our unfortunate victims with the kinds of Body and Muscle Mass changes that indicate the onset of OAS.”

However, Virgin Active CEO and farmers everywhere have been staunchly defensive.

“We’ll defend ourselves to the last,” said Virgin Active CEO Richard Branson. “I’m not even sure if the research is sound: in fact, most of the people who come to our gyms don’t end up being healthy and ripped anyway. Hell, the largest percentage of our subscribers is Guilty New Year’s Resolution folk, and they all quit almost immediately after Day One.”

Farmers, too, have defended their actions.

“Eating our produce might bring you OAS, sure,” said murder carrots and grim reaper corn grower Moor Talitie, “But eating alternative foods – fatty foods and carbohydrates – is clinically proven to give you higher cholesterol, excess adipose tissue and heart conditions: what doctors are now calling Fat Fuck Syndrome. I mean, I know it’s choosing between two evils, but ours is definitely the lesser of the two.”

Small changes make Sieg Heil salute okay – NWU Potch campus study

Researchers and Nazi experts at the North West University's Potchefstroom campus have stunned local students after they released a report showing how “minor aesthetic alterations” to the controversial facist Nationalist party’s ‘Sieg Heil’ salute could make it “actually okay to do in public”.

“We all know how much a lot of us love the salute,” said students we spoke to on the campus grounds. “We just don’t know how to do it without making ourselves look like a bunch of inbred, ignorant, facist, racist, white-supremacy-loving, Fatherland-worshipping, Fuhrur-idolising arseholes.”

The 486-page report is packed with detailed diagrams and instructions showing how right-wing serenaders at the university campus could in future avoid being branded as extremist bigots with an agenda of disseminating racial intolerance and a supremacist ideology.

“As Usain Bolt, Championship footballers and countless historic examples have shown us, if we just alter the salute a bit, we can take away the hateful Hitlerness of what is otherwise a lovely arm gesture,” said head researcher Sally Tations.

“Look at Bolt – take away his other arm and what do you see? A Nazi Salute. This simple fact immediately tells us that the first step to not being a eugenics-loving Arian hatemonger is altering not your attitude towards skin colour, but either one or both arms mid-salute,” she said.

Tations went on to add that bending the right arm at the elbow, waving your Heiling arm from side to side, closing your hand into a fist, adding gesticulations with your other hand and not yelling in German were all excellent alternatives. Improving diversity on the Potch campus, she said, could also help to hide their racist tendencies.

“We noticed in the pictures in the newspaper of that serenade how there were a few black students involved in performing the salute,” he said. “However, these darker students were still a minority. If there had been maybe all black students doing it, it might not have been so hectic. Hell, it might have even been some kind of socio-political commentary on contemporary discourses of identity formation or something.”

The report has since been met by whitespread, sorry, widespread approval.

“It’s blerrie lekker,” said NWU student and BA Fingerpainting major Royce Yste. “Now I can salute the Fatherland while pretending I’m just waving to my brandy-addled mates at the next sokkie-jol I go to to enjoy cultural homogeneity. I’m flippen’ pleased.”

Nationalist party leader Adolf Hitler could not be reached for comment.