Jim Hopkins: It's been all downhill since Newton invented gravity

COMMENT

Male gene shrinking - News item.

Giant asteroid may strike Earth- News item.

PM a victim of her own success? - News item.

Science is a tricky business. It's full of perplexing things like protons and wontons and lots of hyper stuff as well. There's hyperdermis, hyperstasis, hyperthalamus and even hypertrophy - which is a big cup that swotty guys win if they know what all the other hypers are.

Needless to say, most of us don't, so we avoid them like the plague. Most of us wouldn't be seen dead with a hyperdermis - or a hyperthalamus for that matter.

And it's the same with the rest of this science malarkey. Generally speaking, we're quite happy to leave the whole sordid business to some of the squares on The Hypotenuse - which was the ship Charles Dickens used to discover revolution.

There's another reason we're uneasy about science. Like Dickens' Theory of Revolution, it hasn't been around very long. For millions of years we didn't have any science at all. Which was pretty tough on virgins and goats, mainly because the virgins spent a lot of time getting sacrificed on altars, and the goats kept having their entrails yanked out by entriloquists who used them to predict the future.

Fortunately, all that changed when a Greek joker called Play Dough accidentally bumped into Sir Isaac Newton while rolling down a hill in a barrel.

Naturally, poor old Sir Isaac was a bit upset and lay on the ground, clutching his ankle and whimpering unscientifically. "Oh, wad are ya?" sneered Play Dough. "Get up, y'big Sisyphus."

Well, this made Sir Isaac Newton so angry that he stormed off and invented gravity - and it's been all downhill from there.

See, that's one of the problems with science. Most of what it discovers is bad news. This week, for instance, some miserable geek has told us that a whopping great asteroid - affectionately named 2003 QQ47 - is likely to splatter us all over the patio on March 21, 2014.

The fact that 2003 QQ47 weighs about 260,000,000,000kg just makes matters worse. Why scientists can't do worthwhile things like finding ways to make flatulent columnists irresistibly attractive to persons like Catherine Zeta Jones and Liz Hurly-Burly is an unfathomable mystery.

Which won't be solved any time soon. Not while they focus on depressing stuff like asteroids and vanishing chromosomes.

That's right. We're running out of Y chromosomes, apparently. Or blokes are, anyway. This is a real worry because Y chromosomes are the things that make bumper bars shiny, so a shortage would be disastrous.

Still, we may have to get used to it because it seems the Y chromosome is a pale shadow of its former hairy-chested self. According to some wretched chromotherapist from the Australian Comparative Genomics Group, things are grim on the Y front.

Pretty soon, the poor wee thing won't even have the strength to sing Waltzing Matilda, mainly because it keeps loosing its genes.

The Y chromosome used to have 1438 of the damned things - and a very big wardrobe - but now there are only 41, which is truly alarming given that one of them determines whether an embryo will turn into a joker or into a prime minister, chief justice or governor-general.

Worse still, in about eight million years, those last 41 genes will have popped their clogs, too, which means we'll all be lesbian dads. And you can forget about old-fashioned rucking then, boyo.

Okay, what's this got to do with the PM being a victim of her own success? Think about it. If the bloke chromosome is in trouble, maybe the success one is as well.

Let's face it, we all remember that one really annoying girl at school. You know, the one who invariably sat in the front, always knew the answer to everything and never got into trouble.

"Did you do that?" the teacher would say whenever there was strife.

"No," that girl would reply angelically. "It was Mark Prebble, Miss. Or Ruth Wilkie. They did it."

And every time a coconut, the teacher believed her.

Well, scientists will tell you that girl probably had the S (for success) chromosome - which is precisely what you need if you're going to become "a competent and popular Prime Minister".

Oh, plus a bunch of flunkeys with the G chromosome - that's the grovel one which means you never whinge about having to carry the can.

But suppose the S chromosome (and the G chromosomes) are fading away like the Y one. This could be calamitous.

The PM might end up with the TB (Tony Blair) chromosome and have to answer all sorts of awkward questions in an inquiry. Frankly, that would never do - as most of our courageous journalists properly agree.

Mercifully, there is hope. According to the genome geezer, we mightn't need the Y chromosome - or the S one, either. Apparently, up in Azerbaijan, there's a small, fluffy creature called the mole vole that doesn't have any Ys but still produces boy mole voles and girl mole voles. Let's hope endangered blokedom and embattled PMs can both quickly evolve into mole voles, so that each can cheerfully sing:

I'm glad I am a mole vole

And mole vole is my name

'Cos no one ever asks me Y

And I never get the blame.