Like all of the regular contributors to XYZ, Your Author spends much of his massively taxpayer supplemented workday lazing around the XYZ pool waiting for the XYZ helicopter to be refuelled so that the XYZ work experience kid can take it down the bottleshop for a few more frosties.
Child labour. Bless. In between these stress filled moments, time is often spent examining the interwebs for interesting tidbits we can then share to a wider audience.
On one such occasion Your Author was dipping into NoTricksZone, a German based English language website that discusses science the Green Blob likes to violently claim is completely settled.
NoTricksZone is a serious science site with only the occasional side journey into levity and humour. If it has a down side, the articles can come across a tad too technical for the casual reader, but it must be remembered that you can’t wear your scientific credibility on your sleeve without using big words, and the sheer volume of content the site provides is a reassuring breath of fresh air for all those readers who have had ever been called a Denier by a smug fair-trade-tofu-eating elitist.
One article that caught Your Author’s eye discussed the frequency of tornadoes. The paper cited is from Dr Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, and for interested readers it is probably best investigated
by following the link.
However the broad implications of this research – namely that tornadoes are becoming less frequent – are somewhat disturbing if taking to the (il)logical conclusion.
Namely that children of the future are simply not going to know what tornadoes are.
This is serious. If L. Frank Baum has taught us anything it is that tornadoes are a vital part of childhood and vital for helping them develop courage, intelligence, heart and to help them get over their natural reluctance to go around murdering witches.
Without tornadoes, none of this may ever happen, and leads us to once again ask, will no one think of the children.
We’re XYZ, and that swimming pool isn’t going to lazy itself.