Run.

I know the Mail doesn't really 'do' science beyond which supermarket groceries are a cause or cure of cancer, but I was genuinely flabbergasted to see an attempt to blame the recent Japanese earthquake on a 'so-called supermoon', an expression I can only assume was coined by the author in a spectacular moment of genius which will no doubt springboard his glittering career in scientific journalism.

The claims that the moon has somehow changed the internal mechanisms of plate tectonics is enough to make anyone who did geography beyond primary school doubt the integrity of the report, no matter how many child-like diagrams are included to try and bludgeon the idea home.
There's something not quite right about this. Like the moon being fucking massive and about the distance from the Earth as my morning commute.

But that's not what pisses me off about things like this. To its (smallish) credit, the article does include a quote from a scientist describing the correlation as 'nonsense', but when this is accosted by 'sources' like this, I start to wonder if this was just an excuse to steal a few wayward Googlers:

Others on the Internet have predicted it will cause further catastrophes such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Coming just three weeks after the quake which devastated Christchurch in New Zealand killing hundreds, this latest disaster will only add fuel to their fire.


Whose fire? Redditors? Fucking hell, when did 'THE INTERNET' become a credible source? Yet if I go to a Borstal to research 'care in the community', I'd be blacklisted from working in journalism for life. What's next, asking Omeglers about the death penalty? A 3-minute video interview tagged onto a front-page story, with a midnight masturbator giving us his two cents? (Don't laugh please.)

But good has come of all this, I now have a little more faith in Mail commenters, although I can't help but think it's only that their usual readership haven't read these stories because they hate Asians:


Then again, a couple of religious fundamentalists (and just mentalists) do slip through the net:



TL;DR - The moon is going to be 221,567 miles from us, rather than the usual 221,569. Run for your fucking lives.

LEAVE BRIAN ALONE.

"Hi, my name is Sam Wollaston. I write for the Guardian and I wish I was Charlie Brooker but unfortunately I'm afflicted with too much jealousy and too little talent.

In lieu of being named as the presenter of S2 of How TV Ruined Your Life, here's a dispassionate list of stuff that Brian Cox is wearing in the first episode Wonders of the Universe."

Ok ok, I'm being unfair. Cox's interpretation of how absolutely massive time and space is was pretty mind-blowing, but it pales in comparison to the way in which Wollaston manages to see a man standing in front of a fuck-off glacier holding a photo of one of the first stars in the universe dying in an unthinkably massive explosion, and can only recall the colour of t-shirt he was wearing.


"Apple green", he quips.

Ouch, there's no call for that kind of crippling insult here, Sam.