PROFESSOR SEEKS TO RAISE AWARENESS, SECURE GRANTS, ON GLOBAL SHRINKING

Professor Howard Nicklas announced today his plan to create the Nicklas Institute on Global Shrinking. Nicklas described the proposed institute as a think tank and research facility to study the effects of global shrinking and raise awareness of the issue worldwide. “Lots of people are talking about global warming,” Nicklas said at a sparsely attended press conference, “like Al Gore and that kid at the coffee shop always shouting about the o-zone and ocean temperatures and stuff.” But global shrinking remains “largely ignored and poorly understood,” according to Nicklas. “We need to take a hard look at global shrinking and consider what a smaller planet could mean to the future of life on Earth as we know it.” Nicklas feels strongly that human activity is a leading cause of global shrinking. “Take mining for example. You take stuff like coal out of the ground and don’t put it back, you’re making the planet smaller. QED.”

Nicklas is seeking over $2 million in grant money from the National Science Foundation, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Sierra Club, WGBH in Boston, the Cato Institute, the NAACP, the Society for Creative Anachronism and Die Freunden der Bayerischen StaatsOper. He is also accepting individual donations in checks made out to Howard Nicklas “spelled N as in Nancy, I-C-K-L-A-S. Or cash. Cash is always good too.”

Funds would be used to make needed improvements to the Nicklas Institute campus, to be housed in a spare room over the professor’s garage. The proposed site would reportedly spruce up nicely with a fresh coat of paint and satellite TV. “A state of the art facility will really help us attract the top researchers in the field of global shrinking,” Nicklas said. Money would also be used for specialized equipment such as “A really big tape measure.” Asked how many researchers the institute expected to employ, Nicklas said, “Uh, so far just one. With enough funding, we might bring on a grad student or lab assistant or something. Especially if she’s hot.”

When told of the plans for the Nicklas Institute, Stephen Meeker, professor of Climatology and author numerous books on climate change and global warming, agreed that “Howard Nicklas needs to be institutionalized but,” he added, “not in that way.”