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Science Corner #3: Nerd Mob Rules sm
Scientists usually choose to settle their disputes in the theoretical arena, out-thinking one another and, when possible, providing testable proofs. In recent and unprecedented events, over 600 respected scientists participated in three simultaneous violent and unlawful riots, two in England (London and Yorkshire) and one at Columbia University, NYC. Three men, apparently the victims of a carefully coordinated attack, escaped with minor injuries. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist known for his experiments on dogs that seem to anticipate their masters' arrivals home, was sipping tea with his wife in their London flat when a brick flew in through the window. Angry scientists broke into the apartment and, allowing Mrs. Sheldrake to cower unimpeded in the corner, delivered a massive wedgie on her helpless husband's underpants. "I had no idea there was a mob descending on my home!" He later exclaimed to the British press. Four minutes earlier that same night amateur physicist and sheep farmer Julian Barbour was walking home across one of his fields when a group of scientists bearing torches and chanting "End-of-Time-My-Ass, End-of-Time-My-Ass" thundered down upon him, snatching his best tweed cap right off his head and tossing it into a nearby bog. Said Barbour, "The incident is frozen in my memory forever. The trauma is so terrible, I'm afraid I'll never be able to move beyond this moment." Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the widly popular and charismatic string theorist Brian Greene was talking animatedly with a group of adoring young students in the grad lounge at Columbia University when 450 enraged scientists stormed the building and surrounded Greene for several hours, during which time they took turns grinding their knuckles into his lush-haired scalp, one nougie for every dimension that string theory, could it ever be tested would require. Says one rioter who refused to be named, "Those guys were really bugging us."