FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN ALICE SPRINGS, NT DUUL WAS A small town on the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. One dirt road led into town; and one dirt road led out. The next settlement was five hundred kilometers away. There were thirty five people in Duul, seventeen houses, and a small general…

SCIENCE REPORTERS A NEW THEORY of climate change suggests that if the Earth warms to a certain level, then all of its moisture will evaporate and the oceans will relocate to the sky, complete with creatures that live in them. “Imagine rain falling up,” says German Nobel laureate Dr. Isaac Hossenpfepper. “The surface of the…

FROM HOLLYWOOD AND VINE IT’S A FORTY-SIX year old conundrum that just had to be solved. Why did Star Wars heroine Princess Leia refer to evil villain Grand Moff Tarkin’s personal odour as a “foul stench”? Well, self-confessed movie and comic nerd Lucius Drivel, believes he has come up with an explanation. “The wicked and…

PHILOSOPHY DESK IN HIS NEW book The Rise of the Court Jester, journalist Randolph Sirius Major argues that mass entertainment’s grip on humanity is now so strong that even elections for high office have been reduced to mere popularity contests. “It used to be that there was the serious life of work and affairs, and…

BY LARRY HEDGE, EDUCATION REPORTER THE FIRST BACHELOR OF MORAL OUTRAGE will graduate three years from now if online university Welt Erwache is successful in launching its latest degree course. “Moral outrage has exploded in recent years,” according to the university’s chancellor Professor Josef Adolf. “You cannot turn your head without hearing someone or other…

FROM WARSAW POLAND’S DECISION TO halt military aid to Ukraine because, it says, it needs the equipment itself, is being interpreted by some experts as an indication that Warsaw feels Ukraine has already lost its war, and that Poland, being next on Russia’s list, is now looking to its own defence. “The Poles have been…

TECHNOLOGY DESK IT WAS ASKED a simple question. It generated an answer within seconds. Then it tore up the script. It is Khan, a quantum computer so intelligent that all the people who have ever lived on this planet would not be equal to one billionth of its brain power. It exists in a plasma…

WASHINGTON, DC AN INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING note about Russian casualties in Ukraine that found its way to President Joe Biden’s desk, has caused embarrassment among American officials when it was found to have referred to the Russians as “VC” (Vietcong). “It’s either a dumb mistake or – and this is where it gets scary – the…

BELGRADE, THURSDAY TEN CALIFORNIAN TEENAGERS who were mistakenly believed to have eaten a mother while she watched her son play soccer in Idaho, turned out to be only mugging her for drugs. The teenagers were described as “mutant zombies” by witnesses because of their “pale indifferent faces, bloodshot eyes, grotesque hair, ugly tatooes and slow…

FROM HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI … RUSSIAN ROULETTE “WE ARE ABSOLUTELY sure that the high-grade weapons NATO has supplied to Ukraine will not be used to launch an attack that Russia cannot ignore.” The NATO spokeswoman, who uttered these words in reply to a question about a forlorn Ukraine launching the kind of long-range strike on…