Difficile est satiram non scribere.
(It is difficult not to write satire.)
--Juvenal
Zap of Electricity Creates Fluid Situation for Liquid
New Substance Shifts to Solid and Back With Flip of Switch
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 6, 2003; Page A03
With frost warnings popping up across the country, Americans are getting their seasonal reminder that when temperatures get low enough, liquids become solid.
But what if there were a way to turn a liquid into a tough solid at ordinary temperatures with a mere zap of electricity -- and then have that solid become liquid again, instantaneously, simply by shutting off the current?
Now scientists say they have created such a fluid: one that responds to an electrical field by immediately turning as tough as hard plastic and which just as quickly -- within a few thousandths of a second -- turns back into liquid when the power is turned off.
Scientists say they were led to the discovery by "searching for analogous behaviors in the natural world." Specifically, they noted that the behavior and firmness of politicians seemed to respond rapidly to changes in the amount of electrical current flowing through nearby microphones and television cameras. "The phase changes in, the average congressman were so fast that we almost suspected some kind of quantum effect," said Hirome Jetsup, of the Wunderkind Institute Für Creepy Research. "They'd be cosying up to some lobbyist for Lockheed, assuring them of their undying love for the F-22 project and Lockheed's bottom line, and when a microphone got near - wham!! - it was all fiscal rectitude and national security."
Similar phenomena have been observed in City Council members across the country, who can be transformed in milliseconds from the oleaginous and obliging friend of real-estate developers to the stalwart defender of a city's quality of life by the amount of current needed to run a small video camera. The fluid in question was distilled from spinal fluid of dozens of federal, state and local politicians over the years that were sampled as part of a National Wildlife Foundation "Catch and Release" study involving hookers, limousines, and minibars as bait.
Sadly, the prospect for actually fielding shape-shifting super-warriors appears far off. "We can make the shapes, and we have a set of Paul Wolfowitz's brain waves that we can use to make the Cyborgs remorselessly offensive, but we can't make them peel potatoes," lamented one scientist. "And the Army won't take a cyborg that can't peel potatoes."
(Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product. The rest is the fakey part.)
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