We hope you all had an excellent Christmas break. It’s been business as usual at here at Boggart Blog, the world’s leading news network.
The Euro is in trouble, reports that Italy had enjoyed a respite from it’s economic woes after a very successful debt auction turned out to be widly exaggerated. Elsewhere Iran threatened to cut off the west’s main oil supply route and North Korea’s new leader threatened to cut off the head of anyone who did not appear sufficiently grief stricken during the period of official mourning for his dear old Dad Kim Jong Il.
But you don’t want to read such dross today so here’s a story about the yellow peril. We’re not being racist, this yellow peril is intelligent slime that can think like humans (i.e. it’s about a billion times more intelligent than the computers that are supposed to be able to almost think like humans).
At Hakodate, northern Japanwhere the rather ambitiously named Future University can be found, Professor Toshiyuki , a leading authority on slime science has cultivated intelligent slime in petri dishes and claims he has discovered how the brainless organism is capable of finding its way out of a maze.
According to Prof. Nakagaki the slime is able to organise its cells to create the most direct route through a maze in order to reach a source of food.
Wow, that’s amazing you might well think but pause for a moment and consider how resourceful lower life forms are at finding food sources. We are not talking about cats or squirrels here, nor even chavs, but really low life forms such as algae.. There are algae that can live in places without light, deep caves for example. There are algae that have adapted to survive the near boiling temeratures of volcanic springs the better to exploit the rich supply og nutrients bubbling up from the bowels of the earth. There are bateria that have found their niche in human bowels and survive there even after the host organism (someone like you, maybe) has eaten a very hot curry. Life at its lowest level is very resilitent and the survival instingct is strong.
“Humans are not the only living things with information-processing abilities,” Prof. Nakagaki said. “Simple creatures can solve certain kinds of difficult puzzles. If you want to spotlight the essence of life or intelligence, it’s easier to use these simple creatures.”
Well he’s right up to a point but as his research involves making snacks available and Boggart Blog has previously reported experiments in snack science that proved corodiles and fishes are capable of recognising the names their keepers gave them but only if snacks were available he has merely reinvented the wheel by revisiting perevious research into the relationship between hungry life forms and snacks. And which of us has not carried out our own experiment to prove this principle by demonstrating our ability to find a kebab or burger van while so totally hammered our brains wwere only running reptrillian cortexons.
So do these findings about food seeking slime highlight how slime mould possesses information processing abilities shared by humans which are far more sophisticated than the most advanced computers? According to Professor Nakagaki they do. Clearly the Professor has never ventured into the kitchen of a house whose occupiers hygiene standards were lax. I recommend watching a few episodes of Kim and Aggie the celebrity cleaning ladies.
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Hmm, yes, I’m not quivering in my rather fine low-heeled leather boots about this yellow slime usurping humankind as Top Dog on the planet. Yet.
As for the Korean thing, I recall that when comrade Stalin made a speech, he was given a unanimous standing ovation for many, many minutes….the first poor bastard to stop clapping was sent off to the gulag for some re-education and a little honest labour.
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Sounds like the kind of things that happens in Obamaland, but with the first to stop clapping being ostracised by their peers.
About the only thing that makes me glad we have the Royal Familiy is we still have the right to take the piss out of them.
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Never before in the field of human mourning have so many shed crocodile tears for so few ( and you cant get fewer than one ). – c. Winston St.Mark 2011
It’s all part of the fun! 🙂
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It’s what happens in a nation ruled by the principle of one man one vote when the one man who has a vote dies.
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Yep. A dose of Harpic Power Plus would sort that slime out. Unless they’re talking about Ed Milliband!
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