At one point on his travels Captain Lemuel Gulliver visits an academy filled with mad scientists. Their experiments are all odd. But what makes them mad is that they are repeated, again and again, whenever they fail. One scientist has spent eight years attempting to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. Vowing to succeed in another eight years, he asks Gulliver for a donation, it being "a very dear Season for Cucumbers".rnJonathan Swift, the author of this satire, would have felt at home in Brussels on June 7th, as the results of the European elections in 27 countries trickled in. The parliament has spent much time and money this year trying to reverse a 30-year trend of falling turnout at Euro-elections. Jolly posters were stuck up across the European Union. The parliament started its own Twitter feed, and put short films up on YouTube depicting the larky side of voting for Europe. One showed bank robbers stopping to cast ballots, mid-heist, under the slogan: "There's always time to vote".
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