If death and taxes are certain in life, then so is idiocy

The world of atmospheric science is agog with excitement today. Nothing so trivial as a major breakthrough in GCM cloud schemes, or an observed reduction in the ozone hole, but the annual Up-the-Hill relay race. Today, literally several scientists in fancy dress will be battling it out up a hill in Colorado for the honour of their research division. Our division's theme is Spain, and so in a reenactment of the Pamplona festival a rather eminent climate analyst, wearing a bull costume, will chase some white-clad, red-sashed fluid dynamicists up an incline.

Normally, I tend to avoid these work-based jollies in the same way that I tend to avoid rabid dogs, since I am neither amused nor entertained by the spectacle of twenty boundary-layer chemists waddling along a road dressed as penguins. However, I am attending this year for the sole reason that the American taxpayer is paying for it.

I shall think of all those hardworking voters diligently filling out their IRS forms every April, I shall think of the thousands of dollars in National Science Foundation man-hours being used up so that a group of academics can publicly make fools of themselves, and I shall roar with laughter.