Articles by John Fostr

A group of UW weather scientists claimed responsibility on Monday for ruining Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ inaugural “car free day” on Capitol Hill yesterday.

Calling themselves the Reactionary Anti-Initiative Network, the scientists explained that Sunday’s downpour was the result of weeks of careful planning and precision actions.

“When Mayor Nickels announced ‘car free days,’ we knew we had to do something,” said project lead Bernard Studemacher. “Weather is what we know, so naturally it was our preferred weapon.”

Disaster struck the U District Monday, as a 6-foot, three-hundred-pound man-mouse hybrid escaped from containment at the University of Washington’s Comparative Genomics Center (CGC) and rampaged through the neighborhood, leaving a trail of terrified children and weirded out adults in its wake.

“It was awful,” said U District resident Penny Orting. “It just came out of nowhere and started waving its hands all over the place, slowly walking toward the children… and they just stood there, paralyzed with fear.”

The genetic abomination is the result of ten years of study at the CGC. A secret project codenamed “Icy Smoke Emu” was funded by $82 million obtained through an innocuous-looking line-item for “test vials” in the biology department’s annual budget.

A recent survey conducted by the Seattle-based Tech Trends Research Institute (TTRI) found that a surprisingly high two percent of US consumers give a crap about Blu-ray high-definition video discs.

The results come as something of a blow to the Blu-ray Disc Association, a thinly-veiled front operation run by Sony Corporation, who had hoped consumers would jump at the chance to replace their perfectly functional DVDs with incrementally better Blu-ray discs priced twice as high.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Jorge McManus, a representative for Sony Corporation of America. “We beat HD-DVD like, five months ago. Why aren’t people lining up to give us money?”

With millions of breathless, quivering nerds hanging on his every live-blogged word, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the specifics today of the latest incremental improvements in the company’s flagship product, the iPhone.

The unveiling of such exciting new features as a black plastic back, metal buttons, and an optional white case for the 16GB model make the iPhone 2.0 the most exciting new device in the history of electronics, and quite possibly the greatest technological achievement in all the universe.

Reactions among Seattle-area nerds were especially enthusiastic…

Scientists at the University of Washington have discovered that the cause of massive honey bee deaths is not a fungus or virus as previously thought, but is in fact due to the intentional sabotage of hundreds of thousands of children armed with fly swatters.

The sudden disappearance of worker bees from colonies across North America known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has been mystifying scientists since 2006. Many theories have been put forward to try to explain the phenomenon; scientists have explored a variety of explanations ranging from cell phone radiation to synchronized swan assaults. However, researchers overlooked the simplest explanation: frightened children.

In the latest shot across the bow of the beleaguered local software giant, friendless loser Ted Elias is suing Microsoft for $25 million.

A statement released by Elias’ lawyer on Friday accuses Microsoft of “totally destroying his mental, social, and physical health by providing my client with unlimited access to the addictive Xbox 360 video game console as well as an unending stream of engrossing hit games.”

“Before he was introduced to the virtual mind-control of the Xbox 360, my client was a successful, well-developed 27-year-old,” said attorney Martin Finklestein, representing Elias in the case. “However, after just two years under the influence of Redmond’s electro-brainwashing, he has lost his job, his friends, and even his basic sense of hygiene.”

In an announcement on Amazon.com’s front page this week, CEO Jeff Bezos declared Kindle—their handheld electronic reading device—to be an overwhelming success, unmatched since the dawn of time by any achievement in the universe.

“Dear Customers,” begins the message from Bezos. “We continue to be astonished at your insatiable hunger for Kindle: our earth-shattering nirvana delivery system.”

“To date, we have sold more than three hundred Kindles for every man, woman, and child on planet Earth,” the note continued, “That’s over two trillion Kindles in just six months.”

The so-called “Progressive” Automotive X PRIZE is anything but progressive, said a newly-formed coalition of Puget Sound business and government leaders named Driving Undermines Humanity (DUH) in a press conference on Friday.

The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE is the latest in a series of privately-run technology competitions run by the X PRIZE Foundation. The foundation is best known for the showy but pointless flights of SpaceShipOne…