Newly Discovered Element “Super-Heavy” and a Total Bummer
Scientists, realizing that the new school year is going to start any minute and they have neglected to do any of their summer homework, have finally deigned to do a bit of actual research. First they read The Red Badge of Courage, just to get it out of the way. Then physicists at Sweden’s Lund University (“Lund: Fun[d] Since 1425!”) discovered “what is considered a new element with atomic number 115.” (Did they learn anything from The Red Badge of Courage, though?)
According to Phys.org, “The new super-heavy element has yet to be named. A committee comprising members of the international unions of pure and applied physics and chemistry will review the new findings to decide whether to recommend further experiments before the discovery of the new element is acknowledged.” How do the scientists know the element is “super-heavy”? A number of reasons:
When scientists asked the element what its favorite movie was, it said Shoah.
When scientists asked the element who it most admired, it said Elliott Smith.
When scientists asked what the element wanted to eat, it said it had lost its appetite since reading about GMO’s.
When scientists asked what the element wanted to do this weekend, the element said it wasn’t going to be able to stop thinking about the plight of the Syrian people so it might as well just stay home and watch CNN International.
When scientists asked the element what the date was, the element said it was the “sixth anniversary of the first time it experienced the loss of a beloved pet.” And then scientists were like, “What? No, like, August what?” And the element was like, “Oh. Yeah, I dunno.”
When scientists asked the element what it wanted for its birthday, the element said it had already picked out a headstone to “save everyone the trouble” in a few years.
Should the new element be named “Bummerarium”? Using examples from The Red Badge of Courage, let us know why or why not in the comments.