Disposable Sausages
Wally Caruthers has invented the world's first disposable sausage. The 'Caruthers Mk IV Expendable Meat Tube' is more streamlined than a traditional sausage and has a friction-minimising outer shell which enables it to be easily hidden behind furniture or whisked away by specially adapted vacuum tubes. As we are unable to determine why Mr Caruthers should be so keen to get rid of sausages, we can only content ourselves with the observation that 'everyone's got to have a hobby'.
Window Tax
This October, Parliament sees the second reading of a private member's bill to introduce a tax on window shopping. Kevin Swindler, MP for somewhere damp, has drafted the bill in response to a downturn in retail sales and the consequential fall in tax revenue to the treasury. If the bill receives Royal Assent, it means that anyone pausing to view goods in a shop window for more than thirty seconds will be liable to pay 20% of the purchase price.
Critics of the proposal have claimed that the tax will be almost impossible to collect, and will bring in less revenue than an alternative scheme to fine pedestrians for speeding.
Great moments in Science - No 412
Milan 1933
Paul Dirac experiments by introducing pasta to his antipasto to see if they will mutually annihilate. They don't. All that happens is that Dirac makes a bit of a mess, is saddled with the cleaning bill then gets thrown out of the restaurant.
Dog Wigs
Anger has erupted at the news that a laboratory in Essex has been testing wigs on dogs. The testing of clothing on animals was banned in Europe in 2004 following a number of high profile cases involving kittens in puffer jackets, hamsters wearing wellington boots and 'trout trousers'. In this latest incident the laboratory, owned and operated by rug manufacturer Wriggley's Wigs, have got around the ban by claiming that the wigs are medical appliances rather than items of clothing.
Campaigner Paddy Barker of the charity Pets Against Pullovers, wants this loophole closed. "There's nothing more shameful than seeing a Basset Hound wearing a beehive or a Great Dane in dreadlocks," she said. "It's a horrifying reminder of mankind's cruelty to his fellow creatures."
A spokesman for Wriggley's Wigs, however, remained unrepentant. "The work we are doing here is vital to so many vain and insecure middle-aged men who are going prematurely bald. No more will they have to suffer the horror of a strangely immobile, oddly-coloured toupee. Or, heaven forbid, the shame of the comically windswept comb-over. And if it means that an Alsatian has to spend an uncomfortable few minutes in an Afro, or a Doberman is spotted grinning stupidly whilst wearing pigtails or a blonde mullet, then I for one think it's worth the sacrifice."
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