Wednesday, October 7, 2009

It's Not Rocket Surgery

My first thought was that it had to be a joke. A parody. There was no other explanation. Clearly, such a headline had to have been pulled from the pages of The Onion, a site which I knew CNN had partnered with before.

But no, they were being serious. It linked directly to CNN.com’s technology section. The headline? Scientists discover massive ring around Saturn.

Were scientists getting stupider? Was this Flowers for Algernon all over again? Sadly, no. Turns out what they were talking about was a completely new ring, undiscovered until now despite its gigantuan1 size. And how is that nobody had seen this thing before? Well, the scientists say, it’s because the ring is nearly invisible. I almost believed this until I took a look at the picture that accompanied the article. And then the realization hit me.

Scientists aren’t stupid. They’re blind.

1 What? Of course "gigantuan" is a word. It means "astrocolossal."

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