What is the difference between man and machine? What separates human intelligence from the mechanical logic of the computerised mind? What, if anything, makes human consciousness unique within the infinite universe? Is it the ability to think intuitively, to make random and apparently irrational decisions? Is it the imagination that allows us to bridge the gap between the commonplace and the possible? Is it the ability to love, to feel compassion, or any of that Star Trek stuff? Well, according to Professor Brinkley Tramlines, the difference between man and mechanism can be defined very easily - it's the ability to swear.
"Too fucking right," says Professor Tramlines. "These bastard computers don't know crap about the real world. They're all locked up safely in twatting laboratories, working out frigging chess problems. Arseholes! They haven't got a sodding clue about the kind of shit that real people have put up with. And they say that one day computers will run the world - Ha! Bollocks to that. You try looking up 'twatty flaps' in your spellchecker and see what you get. Trust me, we won't succeed at producing real machine intelligence until we finally come up with a toaster that can tell you to piss off."
If a tree falls over in a forest, will it only make a sound if there is someone there to hear it? What if the only witness to the event is deaf? And what if a falling tree hits a deaf man in a forest - will anyone hear him scream? This was the question posed by independent researcher Christian Pyle, who has spent the last twenty years researching this very subject. So far, his illegal tree-felling experiments have claimed the lives of over 150 unsuspecting test subjects, and he is currently wanted by the police in 23 countries.
Confused by the menus in Italian restaurants? Don't know your Cannelloni from your Macaroni, or your Tagliatelle from your Vermicelli? Well help is here at last, in the shape of Linguiniphone - a brand new language course from Jabberdiscs. It comes on five easy-to-follow cassettes, personally endorsed by the Institute Of Advanced Pasta Design in Milan. Listen to them in the car or on the bus! Practice whilst out jogging or on the toilet! You'll soon master this romantic and entrancing tongue and be talking fluent Pasta in no time at all. Jabberdiscs also intend to bring out a version in French, just as soon as they can come up with a suitable pun.
Mrs Doreen Lubricant has invested a considerable amount of her own money on an outlandish scheme to make the coastline of Great Britain 'less jaggedy'. "You take a good look at any map of Britain," she explains, "and it becomes painfully obvious what the real problem with this country is - the edges of it are all ragged. You've got bits jutting out here and there, and great big bulges all over the place. It looks a proper sight, I must say. What visitors think of us when they come over here, I don't know. No wonder we have slipped so far in the estimation of the rest of the world when we can't even keep our own coastline tidy."
To rectify this situation, Mrs Lubricant is searching for as many volunteers as possible to join her in a vigorous campaign of sanding and planing, with the eventual aim of making Britain's coastline smoother and more streamlined. She has also written to the government in the hope of enlisting official backing for her project, but so far the response has been lukewarm.
"Whilst we always make the effort to be sensitive to individual concerns," said David Contour, government spokesman for geography, "in this particular case we can't avoid coming to the conclusion that this woman is an absolute basket case. As I understand it, Mrs Lubricant's efforts to smooth down the coastline have already resulted in instances of criminal damage to private property. And, whilst I am sympathetic to her claims that 'some of the pointy bits are a danger to shipping', I'm afraid the government cannot condone the wilful destruction of the environment. Quite frankly, the woman is a menace, her ideas are ludicrous and the only thing that commends her bizarre and unnatural scheme is that it would involve the almost total eradication of East Anglia."
Keen amateur astronomer Harry Fontaine caused a stir amongst both amateur and professional colleagues alike when he announced that he had observed strange and inexplicable anomalies in the motion of the planet Mars. "It was about 7.30pm yesterday," Harry explained. "I was watching the planet from my bedroom window. Suddenly I saw it get on a bus and go into town. I remember thinking to myself, 'That's funny. It usually stays in on a Wednesday night.'"
If Harry's sighting is confirmed it means scientists will have to completely rethink their ideas about what Mars does for fun in the evenings.
Or to put it another way: where does all the dog crap go? We are all familiar with the bins provided in parks and other public spaces for the disposal of canine excrement. And no doubt we are all grateful that pet owners are encouraged to deal with their animals' mess responsibly. But the question is, what happens to the poop once it's been scooped?
This was a puzzle that greatly concerned geologist Sydney Kerr from Boston. After investigating the matter, he discovered that eventually it all gets loaded into a container ship and deposited on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic. This tiny and insignificant island, known to tanker crews as 'Shitsville', is little more than a rock and isn't even marked on most maps. Nevertheless, it is the final resting place for all the dog mess originating in North America and most of Europe. The island was completely covered in excrement many years ago, but the shipments keep arriving and the crap just gets piled higher and higher.
In fact, at the current rate of (excuse the pun) dumping, Shitsville will be the third largest geographical feature on the planet by the end of the year. It already beats Mount Makalu in Nepal by a good seventy feet. But Mr Kerr is extremely worried about instabilities in the mass. There have already been a number of significant 'shitfalls' and expensive engineering attempts to shore up the mound have proved inadequate. On an expedition last June, Mr Kerr detected a major fault line whilst climbing the north face. If the fracture spreads it will inevitably result in catastrophe, effectively splitting the mound in two. Kerr calculates that the sheer quantity of compacted dog turds cascading into the ocean would create a devastating tsunami - a wave of crap over forty feet high, which would strike the North American coastline with incredible force, cause widespread pollution and fill the Caribbean with floaters.