Gold Bull-what?

An enterprising gentleman in Northern Ireland recently attempted an experiment to turn his feces into gold. So my headline is slightly misleading; the alchemy under consideration involved human excrement because the fellow overlooked the easy marketing strategies available had he tried to turn bull-**** into bull-ion.

He also apparently overlooked some other properties of chemistry, such as the flash point of certain materials and the fact that many chemical reactions create heat and don't need external heat sources to reach combustible temperatures. Thus he burned down his apartment and drew the attention of local law enforcement, who frown upon unauthorized science experiments when they endanger other people's lives and damage their property.

And he overlooked an unintended consequence of his experiment had he been successful: The end of gold as a useful metal for currency. The scarcity of gold makes it valuable; the ubiquity of ordure makes it relatively worthless. Leaving aside the ability of politicians, Lady Gaga, Paul Haggis and MTV Networks to create a metaphorically identical output to the material our scientist used, the amount of the actual substance produced would lead to gold being not worth a...well, you get the idea.

The story notes that the man seems to have other issues with chemicals, so I can do nothing but wish him the best in his recovery, since no one was seriously harmed in his mishap.