Sci/Tech

Seattle’s electric grid faces the ultimate challenge this weekend as tens of thousands of video game nerds from all corners of the country descend upon downtown, gadgets and games in hand for the Penny Arcade Expo, a three-day nerdtopia at the Washington State Convention Center.

Well over fifty thousand socially awkward, sun-starved nerds and geeks packed the convention center to the gills as the expo got underway Friday. Ultranerd video game writer Ken Levine kicked off the ceremonies as the keynote speaker, inspiring the pasty masses with the tale of his personal transformation from socially awkward child to socially awkward adult.

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?”