Another Strike?

Unfortunately, it's the Cold Hard Facts. The Computer Programmers Guild has decided to strike for better health care and tastier donuts.

Well the most important issue is health care. System programming is a dangerous job. I'll bet you didn't know that a programmer is 58% more likely to have a heart attack than a bridge builder. It stands to reason. We should have better health care than them. And, from what I understand from the BBOB, that's the Bridge Builders of America, bridge builders have a very good health plan.

Which brings us to the next issue, donuts. I don't know about you guys, but we're sick of having the same doughnut every meeting. It's not fair working conditions. I think that workplaces should be forced to provide cookies, cakes, or even tarts sometimes, instead donuts. We're not unreasonable, so we'll say three days a week of donuts and two days of other junk food.

We can easily force corporations to the table, because we hid code in every new Windows computer to make it extra vulnerable to viruses during this time, and with so many programmers out of work, we'll just say Symantec's customer support should expect to be extra busy. So I'm sure we'll reach a settlement real soon... or else.

Unexpectedly, the American Chemical Society and American Physics Society started sympathy strikes, causing widespread chaos and destruction. In the interests of obtaining the Cold Hard Facts, we interviewed a representative from each.

An ACS representative:

It wasn't a hard choice to make. We understand health risks. I mean one day you mix Glycerin with Nitric and Sulfuric acids under heat*, and the next day you're in the hospital missing a few digits, and as for doughnuts, most of our members can't even eat them in the workplace. How unfair is that? So we decided to quit work and use the free time to play nasty chemical type pranks on our enemies. Just yesterday, we rigged a cadaverine bomb to detonate during the American Society of Literary Criticism's discussion of "Feministic Ideas behind Isaac Newton's Principia Mathmatica. Ha Ha, what suckers. And I can't wait to pull off tomorrow's agenda. Which reminds me, I think I hear a police car coming, and that means I'm out of here.

Well I sure can't wait to see what those fun loving chemists destroy next. But now lets turn to the APS representative.

That's right, we may or may not have found Higg's Particle, but we won't tell you anything, until you double each and every one of our research grants. In the meantime, our members will be hiding in bushes, and then jumping out at people to explain Schrodinger Equations in detail. And, if I were you, I would make sure to see the ball drop tonight. One of our workers is already stationed there for a little demonstration of something we like to call inelastic collisions involving lead projectiles at high velocities.

Programmers not working, chemists pulling all sorts of nasty pranks, and physicists conducting drive-by shootings? What is this world coming to?







*Try it. It's real fun.