Periodic Table Gets a New, Unnamed Element

koavf writes "More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of 'super-heavy' element 112, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery, but it has yet to be named. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has temporarily named the element ununbium, as 'ununbi' means 'one one two' in Latin; but the team now has the task of proposing its official name." Slashdotium? Taconium? Man, I shoulda gone into science so I could have named something sweet that kids have to memorize in classes.

Comments

Re:It's so obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod funny, not insightful, doofheads.

Re:It's so obvious

[Smidge207]

Rhymes with Barium? That'll be a boon for Tom Lehrer...

*sigh* So you post at a natural 3, eh? Well, chill; I doubt he fears you or your arguments - especially that they seem to come from a sense of frustration.

And it's true. Mostly, atheists are talking to each other when making logical arguments against religion - mostly to provide each of us with "make the proseltyzer feel stupid so he'll leave me alone" ammo.

Most of us realize that you'll drop the imaginary friend in your own time, or maybe you won't; either way, nothing we say will change it. For that segment of us, it's to create a bullet-proof anti-preacher shield. What fun is it, for example, to be told you're going to hell if you don't have a good argument as to why hell probably doesn't exist?

That said, the majority of us aren't really looking for an argument. We know arguments happen; we're quite outnumbered in the world, and it's very hard to keep the fact that you don't actually believe in God to yourself. You know. It comes up - and nine times out of ten, when it does, you end up getting the third degree by someone who was satisfied with 'Because God made it that way' for their whole lives or the 'flavor of the month' theist who is newly converted and wants to share (read: force) her new insights with you. Initially, argument prep is self-defence, though it often migrates to preemptive defense and outright flaming.

We should be more mature than that, and in fact, most of us are. It's just that, like any group, you get the teenagers and the adults who never left high school who are so damned sure of themselves that they can't be bothered to respect the choices of others.

I try to reprimand my fellow atheists occasionally when they step out of line; responses to insane proseltyzing that includes threats of damnation don't get rebuffed, but once in a while you'll get the genuinely curious question about atheism and the vitrolic atheist auto-reponse - and I'll shoot that down every time.

Sorry, dude, I can't moderate all the 'fuck God!' posts. I'd go crazy. But I just want to let you know that most of us aren't actually like that. We're good, normal people who just happen to not believe in a deity or deities.

=Smidge=