The phone bill was exceptionally high and the man of the house called a family meeting…

On a Saturday morning…

after breakfast…

Dad:
People this is unacceptable. You have to limit the use of the phone. I do not use this phone, I use the one at the office.

Mum:
Same here, I hardly use this home telephone as I use my work telephone.

Son:
Me too, I never use the home phone. I always use my company mobile.

Maid:
So - what is the problem? We all use our work telephones !!!!!

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself - Leo Tolstoy

A plane leaves Los Angeles airport under the control of a Jewish captain. His copilot is Chinese. It’s the first time they’ve flown together, and an awkward silence between the two seems to indicate a mutual dislike.

Once they reach cruising altitude, the Jewish captain activates the auto-pilot, leans back in his seat, and mutters, “I don’t like Chinese.”

“No rike Chinese?” asks the copilot, “….why not?”

“You people bombed Pearl Harbor, that’s why!”

No, no,” the co-pilot protests, “Chinese not bomb Peahl Hahbah! That Japanese, not Chinese.”

“Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese… doesn’t matter, you’re all alike!”

There’s a few minutes of silence.

“I no rike Jews either!” the copilot suddenly announces. “Oh yeah, why not?” asks the captain.

“Jews sink Titanic.”

“What? That’s insane! Jews didn’t sink the Titanic!” exclaims the captain, “It was an iceberg!”

“Iceberg, Goldberg, Greenberg, Rosenberg, … no mattah… all same!

Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang.

They have fired a beam of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash particles together with cataclysmic force. Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics. The beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. “There it is,” project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.He added later: “We had a very good start-up.”

The LHC is arguably the most complicated and ambitious experiment ever built; the project has been hit by cost overruns, equipment trouble and construction problems. The switch-on itself is two years late. The collider is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research - better known by its French acronym Cern.

The vast circular tunnel - the “ring” - which runs under the French-Swiss border contains more than 1,000 cylindrical magnets arranged end-to-end. The magnets are there to steer the beam - made up of particles called protons - around this 27km-long ring.

Eventually, two proton beams will be steered in opposite directions around the LHC at close to the speed of light, completing about 11,000 laps each second.

At allotted points around the tunnel, the beams will cross paths, smashing together near four massive “detectors” that monitor the collisions for interesting events.Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge, revealing fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos.