The Back Page of the Merry Goblins Warhammer Page
(Where you find out just how warped my mind really is)
Issue #4 : 9th December 2014
Hi, and welcome to issue four of The Appalling Green Biology, the back page of the Merry Goblins Warhammer Page. This is a place where I put some of my more random thoughts to keyboard as they flit across my mind in a grand effort not to get run over by the overarching twin juggernauts of mindless tedium and inane logic.
The last isue of The Appalling Green Biology was 20th September 2002. For anyone who didn't figure out how to get to this back page by themselves and were directed here by some benevolent (or malificient!) deity, that's twelve years ago as I type this. That's most of the time I've been at my present job! (What can I say, they chain me to the desk and make me work for sexu- OK that's enough sharing.) So, how has the world changed in the last 12 years?
2003 - The Iraq War began. The one where they went in looking for WMDs - the ones that didn't exist. Yep, that was 11 years ago. I guess time flies when you're looting Iraqi museums. They toppled Saddam the same year, and later found him hiding in a hole. Naturally, the yanks stay there a few years because they like the weather. Concorde made its last commercial flight.
2004 - NASA landed a rover on Mars (Opportunity). Also the first transit of venus since 1882. There'd be another in the time when I didn't update the website, in 2012. (They're like buses, none for 122 years and then two come at once.) Sticking on the astronomical theme for 2004, the Cassini-Huygens probe reached Saturn. Ronald Reagan and Christopher Reeve died. The 2004 Olympics in Athens.
2005 - Surgeons carried out the first human face transplant. (Face/Off doesn't count.) A leap second was added to the year, last done back in 1998.
2006 - Saddam was tried (by the Iraqis) and hanged. Russia cuts off the supply of natural gas to Ukraine (fast forward to now and compare...). Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet (Mickey wasn't happy).
2007 - Garry Kasparov is arrested after marching in a rally against Putin. Again, compare to now... They find habitable earth-like planet Gliese 581c.
2008 - The world financial crisis - Northern Rock brought into state ownership. Visionary Arthur C. Clarke dies. Bill Gates retires from Microsoft to philanthropy. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) fails to destroy life-as-we-know-it by creating a black hole. The 2008 Olympics in China.
2009 - Icelands bank collapses. The G20 meets, mainly talking about the financial crisis. Swine Flu.
2010 - The Haiti earthquake kills 300,000 people at 7.0 on the Richter scale. Volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajokull (pronounce that!) disrupts air travel across Europe. Bailout for Greece following from the global financial crisis.
2011 - The Arab Spring - Tunisians and Egyptians overthrow their governments. War in Syria and Libya. Osama bin Laden killed. Massive flooding in Thailand (affecting over 12 million people and costing an estimated 45 billion dollars).
2012 - 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. Arab Spring continues - in Yemen. Curiosity rover lands on Mars. London olympics.
2013 - North Korea performs underground nuclear tests. Edward Snowden leaks NSA secrets to the world.
2014 - Ebola. Russia and Ukraine. ISIS. I type this.
So... wars, astronomy, pandemics, natural disasters and the fall and rise of dictators. Let's just call that 'history'. Now where did I put that Billy Joel MP3...
Next issue: I miss another 10 years and wax lyrical about the fall of Western Civilisation to our insect overlords.
Do you know why this page is called The Appalling Green Biology ? Mail me at if you work it out.