We all know that the Starship Enterprise, like all spaceships, zips between the stars using a space warp. You know, it bends space so that here and there are brought very close together, so that the absolute speed limit of the speed of light doesn’t cause any problem.

There is one difficulty with this approach. The recent detection of gravitational waves has shown that space is really, really stiff. You need to annihilate two neutron stars to bend space a distance equal to one one-thousandth of the diameter of a proton. Captain Kirk would need to load a mass hundreds of times larger than the mass of the Sun to move his ship 0.00000000000000001 feet. (As an aside, I should mention that the Enterprise is powered by “dilithium.” Lithium contains 3 protons, so dilithium (“di” means “two”) contains two lithium atoms per dilithium atom. Unless you are a democratic socialist who believes that basic arithmetic is an oppressive tool of white supremacy, two times three is six. Unless you are a democratic socialist who took a course in gender studies instead of chemistry, you would notice that an atom with six protons is called carbon. Carbon is the primary ingredient of coal. Apparently, the Enterprise, like a nineteenth century steam locomotive, runs on coal.)

So, space warps are out. But does that mean that we are tethered to the solar system? Fear not! It turns out that there is another way to reach the stars. To the consternation of physicists (like me), the path to going boldly where no weasel has gone before was foreshadowed by Star Wars (the Force) and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (the Infinite Impossibility Drive).

The secret is hidden in the bowels of quantum theory.

Fact 1: since you are obviously literate and well educated (you follow Fun with Doom), you have heard of quantum entanglement. If you zig one member of a pair of entangled objects, the other member zags IMMEDIATELY. And I do mean immediately. Recent experiments by Chinese physicists have managed to entangle two atoms that are 1500 miles apart. And some Italian physicists have measured how long it takes for the second atom to zag after you zig Number One. If you divide the distance between the two atoms by this time (that gives you the speed), you find that this speed is at least ten million times the speed of light. Take that Einstein!

Fact 2: we learn from quantum field theory (an area in which I pursued research before finding honest employment) that the vacuum is not empty! The vacuum is filled with “virtual pairs” of particles and antiparticles which wink in and out of existence in trillionths of a second (which proves that you can get away with anything if you do it fast enough).

Let us now combine these two facts. To zip across the known universe, we need merely entangle the Enterprise with one of the virtual particles, then entangle this virtual particle with a nearby virtual particle, and so on. Shoveling a little more coal in the furnace, we depart on our intergalactic adventure!

My Nobel Prize awaits.

Hello again, Dear Reader, I return after an extended absence. Some of this absence I spent on the Upper Amazon (I’m not kidding), but I return refreshed and ready once again to bring you tidings of Doom. The latest sign of the apocalypse is being brought to us by the legislatures of New York and Virginia, both of which have either passed (New York) or recently considered (Virginia) abortion statutes which contemplate abortions performed so late that the kid is already born, if its existence threatens the mental health of the mother. (I must admit that New York has an ant-partial birth abortion law, but how long do you think that will hold up in the current climate?)

Now this brings up an interesting question: how old does the little monster have to be before you are no longer permitted to croak it?

Let’s face it; at some point, everybody wants to kill one or more of their children. How many times have you yourself said to one of your little darlings “I’m going to kill you if you ever do that again!” By the time the kid is two years old, it has figured out that this is not true, which explains the Terrible Twos. The fact that you also know that this is untrue is based on two fundamental facts. One, you of course love your progeny, who represent both your genetic immortality and your future bragging rights. But two, you are fully aware that bumping the kid off will earn you either the right to room with Bubba the Sex Maniac for the next forty-five years or, in more progressive states, the right to an unpleasant electrocution.

Now, let us assume for the moment that fact two is eliminated. What possible ages might one select for the cutoff of infanticide rights?

Kids tend to poop in their pants until they are about three, which is revolting, so we have potential cutoff number one.

Kids often pee in their beds until they are about eight, which is also revolting, so we have potential cutoff number two.

Kids hit puberty at around thirteen, which makes them ricochet off the walls, so we have potential cutoff number three.

Kids get driver’s licenses at around sixteen, so we have potential cutoff number four (no explanation needed).

Finally, kids head off to college at around eighteen, which is insanely expensive even if they go to Okefenokee County Institute for Medieval Gender Studies, so we have potential cutoff number five.

I could go on, but you get my drift.

But why should your rights be restricted to your children. Aren’t there lots of other relatives who drive you nuts? For example, your wife and your brother-in-law? Kill ‘em both!

And how about folks who are not related to you, but also drive you up the wall? How about your boss (that jerk)? How about the guy in the next cubicle whose cell phone uses the Song of the Volga Boatmen as its ringtone?

And why restrict things to people you actually know? That great philosopher Ogden Nash once created the deathless poem “I think, therefore I am. But what bothers me are all the people who don’t think, but are anyway.” What about rap musicians (sic), heavy metal practitioners, artists who draw with dilute solutions of excrement? As the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland would say, “off with their heads!”

Cutoffs? We don’t need no stinking cutoffs. We just need to issue completely unrestricted hunting licenses which permit us to shoot whomever we want to, at any time, in any place, for any damn reason we please. To prevent mass shootings, we must impose a bag limit, say one per day. Vast fun. But if I were you, I’d stay out of New York and Virginia.

It used to be that calling someone “SWINE!” was a term of opprobrium. But, Dear Reader, those times are rapidly passing. The savants of the Salk Institute (named after the late, great Jonas Salk, who created the polio vaccine) have now given us entry to a brave new world, described in unpleasant detail in “The Island of Dr. Moreau” and “The Fly.”

You no doubt recall that Dr. Moreau, working in isolation on a hidden tropical island, created animal-people hybrids. They looked like people, but were likely to bite you in the ass. Similarly, the mad physicist in “The Fly” managed to intercalate his molecules with those of a fly which wandered into his teleportation apparatus, producing a creature with a fly’s head and one fly arm, and a little tiny fly with a human head and one human arm. (Query: why are physicists always portrayed as mad? I’m a physicist, and I’m not mad. Ask my psychiatrist. But I digress.)

In a recent issue of the journal “Cell”, an article by a team of authors (including some from the aptly named Kinki University) announced that they had successfully created an embryo made up of a mixture of human and pig cells, which is currently growing happily inside a lady pig.

Now, the little beastie is mostly pig; in fact, it is only 0.001% human. But you don’t think that things are going to stop there, do you? What happens when they get up to 50/50?

I can see it now. The little bastard will snuffle off for his first day of school. In the middle of recess, the teachers will find him rooting about in the dumpster. Meat prices being what they are, the local butcher will chase him about the schoolyard, knife at the ready. And when he is kicked out of school, his parents will accuse the school district of porcophobia, provoking mass marches, and lawsuits. And what the hell is he supposed to put down when the Feds demand that he list his ethnicity on the census?

CRISPR has its downside.

We can all agree that firearms ownership by most private citizens is completely unnecessary in the light of the lightning response times to 911 calls. Accordingly, we should pass legislation outlawing private firearm ownership except for Certified Terrorists. In order to achieve a Certified Terrorist designation, the applicant must complete an approved Terrorist Training Course, which will ensure that no more than 15% of the shots fired by the Certified Terrorist will strike persons whom the Certified Terrorist does not intend to kill during a Terrorism Event. In addition to completing the Terrorist Training Course, the applicant must provide evidence of affiliation with a Generally Recognized Terrorist Group, such as ISIS (ISIL), Al Qaeda, the Earth Liberation Front, the Ku Klux Klan, or any other organization recognized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Terrorist Group. Upon completion of these requirements, the applicant will be issued an LTK (License to Kill) which will have an initial term of seven years, but may be renewed.

This legislation will achieve several objectives. It will greatly reduce the number of firearms in general circulation, thereby reducing the number of nine-year olds playing unsupervised in playgrounds at three o’clock in the morning who will be injured by stray rounds. It will cause cessation in the primitive practice of mammal hunting, which will enable rural populations to change their diet from one that is meat-based to a far more healthy one based on fish, leaves, and twigs.

As of this writing, I have not yet found a legislator with sufficient courage to introduce such legislation, but I am confident that, after the Coronation, this difficulty can be easily surmounted.

The great mystery of carrier pigeon navigation was solved a few years ago by  ornithologists, who discovered that the birds have iron filings in their heads, and use them to sense the earth’s magnetic field. OK. But a new biological application for magnetic field sensitivity among the lower animals has now been recognized.

The journal Frontiers in Zoology (2013, 10:80) has published a study which demonstrates conclusively that dogs are also magnetic field direction sensitive.

Dogs, it turns out, poop and pee parallel to the Earth’s magnetic field.

The study was carried out over two years, and covered 70 dogs, 37 breeds, 1,893 poops, and 5,582 pees. This exactitude gives new meaning to the term OCD.

You may well ask: who the hell would spend his time sniffing around dog poop and pee for two years? Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek,Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, that’s who. These worthies work at the Czech University of Life Sciences and the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. (This suggests that, for a change, your tax dollars were not expended on this particular bit of shitty (literally) research.)

I am willing to bet the farm that a large fraction of these authors are grad students. I can see it now: full professors swinging whips, driving the students to keep their noses to the ground and plot those piles of festering excreta on polar graph paper.

We must ask: what is the application of this research? Is it pure science, or can it bring greater happiness to mankind? I vote for the latter.

Enlightened by this research, hunters with hunting dogs need no longer carry compasses.