HACkers blog

Following on the recent discovery [see below] of Governmentium (Gv), chemists at the University of Cape Town recently announced the discovery of an even heavier element, which they’ve named Bremnerium (Bm), as its heaviness seems particularly apparent at its top.

Bremnerium exhibits some interesting chemical properties, hitherto unobserved in any previously discovered elements. These include a propensity of some nuclear particles to reproduce through fission – most easily observed in highly charged particles called rectrons – and an ability of other nuclear particles to form sub-particles which then continue to orbit the parent particle in eccentric orbits – most readily observed in particles previously considered inert, named registrons.

These sub-registrons are found in complementary pairs, and exhibit the curious behaviour observed on an astronomical level between stars and their twin dark stars, leading the UCT chemists to speculate that one of the pair is a sub-atomic form of anti-matter, whose properties may account for the observation that other elements found in close proximity to atomic Bremnerium exhibit a sustained decrease in energy levels, with their electrons ultimately unable to sustain their orbits and then falling in on the nucleus, resulting in elemental implosion. Colleagues in the biological sciences who have observed this phenomenon have likened it to an atomic form of phagocytosis and have cautioned that the resultant gain in mass could lead to the ultimate instability of this new element as the surrounding environment becomes progressively impoverished.

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Remember, remember
The 5th of November
The gunpowder, treason & plot
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot 

402 years ago today, Guy Fawkes and his team were arrested for plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament in England, an event that was marked for many years by "Guy Fawkes Night" locally - celebrated with fireworks, bonfires and - so long ago that I'm giving away my age by mentioning it - the wheeling around of a stuffed effigy on a barrow, door-to-door in the neighbourhood, collecting "a penny for the Guy".

 Yes, there are still some of us alive who recall the days when walking door-to-door in the neighbourhood to collect sponsors for Big Walks, to do "bob-a-job", to sell raffle tickets or to collect "a penny for the Guy" wasn't thwarted by two metre high security fences, armed response and killer guard dogs. But I suppose our neighbours back then took more kindly to being asked for "a penny for the Guy" than today's neighbours do to being asked for "a piece of bread for the child for school tomorrow". Somehow money for fireworks seems less threatening to money for basic necessities in the polite suburbs, I guess.

These days "Guy Fawkes" has been largely overshadowed by Halloween, a recent intrusion abetted by American TV programmes, and many people have questioned the local relevance of an essentially English commemoration (there termed "bonfire night"). This aside from the calls to ban the observance due to the harmful effects of firecrackers on domestic animals, the risk of fires spreading in dry windy summer conditions, and the environmental impact of litter on beaches and other public places.

I've always thought Guy Fawkes to be a highly relevant occasion to commemorate. What could be more South African, really, than a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament? The religious aspects are of course not the primary consideration here - more that a group of dissidents took action against an oppressive regime, however unfortunate the outcome.

I've been told that the English commemoration of bonfire night is to celebrate the foiling of the plot and the execution of Guy Fawkes, embodied in the symbolic burning of the Guy, but in all our childhood celebrations of Guy Fawkes, it was his audacity, his opposition to oppression and his attempt that was celebrated, with the burning of the Guy some easter-like killing of the deity to free him from his earthly shackles, to arise phoenix-like from the ashes surrounded by the splendour of the Catherine Wheels, Jumping Jacks and Tom Thumb crackers. 

In these days of the silencing of dissenting voices, the spirit of Guy Fawkes is all the more relevant as an inspiration - long after the discovery of the plot, and the execution of the conspirators, the memory of Guy Fawkes and his attempts live on, commemorated across the English-speaking world, a reminder of the persistence of resistance even in the darkest hour of repression.