You’ve now found it impossible to miss the spectacle of some of the country’s biggest phonies, journalists who assiduously avoided anything science in college, writing about the “God particle.”
Rebecca J. Rosen is an associate editor at The Atlantic. She was previously an associate editor at The Wilson Quarterly, where she spearheaded the magazine’s In Essence section (a place where no science is seen, ever).
We stand today on the eve of one of the most highly anticipated scientific announcements of all time: an “update in the search for the Higgs boson” (a delightfully understated description if there ever were one). Has the world ever been so excited about a particle before? No. But why? What is this Higgs boson, and is there more to it than just its catchy moniker, the “God particle”?
Cut to an animation from “PHD Comics.” The Atlantic is a Google Editor’s Choice, mostly because The Atlantic bribes them.
So, you might be asking what’s so important about finding the Higgs boson?
The short answer is that the Higgs boson can account for all of the unexplained mass in the universe …
Particle physics is the study of the individual elements that comprise our universe. As most know, atoms are composed of smaller components; neutrons, electrons and protons. When electrons jump between atoms, new substances are formed, but the nucleus of an atom generally remains unchanged unless it undergoes a nuclear reaction …
I’m eagerly awaiting the announcement tomorrow. If the scientists at the LHC found proof of the Higgs boson, it would be huge for the scientific community and the future of science as we know it.
From TIME:
Sometime Wednesday, depending on word that comes out of a press conference in Geneva, the universe will cease to exist. All forms of matter — planets, stars, dogs, cars, you — will effectively dissolve. Mass will be no more; only energy will remain.
That’s the bad possibility. The good possibility is that researchers working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the mammoth, $10 billion particle accelerator located 380 ft. (116 m) underground at the French-Swiss border — will announce that they’ve at last confirmed the existence of the long-sought Higgs boson …
ASPEN, Colo. — Physicists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a potential key to an understanding of why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe …
I mention Overbye only because I once tried to read his Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos.
At any time, from a guaranteed sleeping pill. If you ever wanted to discourage anyone from becoming a little too fascinated with science and discovery, Overbye’s was the book to give them. Gift-wrapped.
Journalists do take science courses. If compelled. Decades ago I taught biochemistry lab at Lehigh. It was a senior/grad level course and it occasionally attracted journalists who were trying to attain a credential to burnish their careers as “science writers” for newspapers.
Years ago I attended a journalist’s seminar at the University of Maryland on a Knight Fellowship to learn about nuclear proliferation.
I was the only trained scientist in the bunch and one of the faculty organizers remarked “There aren’t many like you doing this.”
One of the Manhattan Project’s old scientists, Carson Mark, was a lecturer.
Mark gave a long seminar on the basics of fission, one in which he spent time speaking about the geometry of a bare critical assembly. It was a good lecture. The journalists virtually rioted, complaining bitterly afterward that they had their time wasted getting bogged down in the arcana of mathematics and high energy physics.
In a sea of soulless, sheeplike dependency, it’s easy to spot the fiercely independent people who continue to declare our independence. We are the producers, the people who make the country work …
Fiercely independent Americans are shocked and saddened by how far our beloved country has slid into socialism.
Defiance is in the DNA of fiercely independent Americans. We defy the notion that the wealth we create through our hard work, sweat and risk can or should be spread around for others. We find that concept to be abhorrent – anti-freedom and anti-American.
July 4, like most big American holidays, morphed into something utterly phony decades ago. Eat hot dogs and hamburgers, watch the fireworks, have a big party for the sake of a party. That’s it.
However, I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything anywhere linking the philosophy of Ayn Rand to the day commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
When the economic collapse disgraced certain Ayn Rand acolytes, the novelist’s [biographer Jennifer Burns] told Politico in 2009: “Wow, Ayn Rand. Dead and buried forever. But she’s come roaring right back.”
Frank informs that Objectivism — the catch-all name for Rand’s philosophy of pure selfishness as the pinnacle of rationality — was essentially whatever she said it was.
He does this humorously.
“When [Rand and her cohorts] weren’t banishing one another from the inner circle … the novelist and her followers were determining, by dint of pure deductive reasoning, that cigarette smoking was life affirming … ” reads the book in one tongue-in-cheek takedown.
I’d give it a B, B+ for the four of ’em, all in the cloud on YouTube. No iTunes used in the playing of this music! (After a few listens, a solid B, no higher.)
How to mix getting old and looking cool, a trick Ted Nugent desperately needs to learn..
McCarthy-ism is far from dead in the US. From e-mail today, a push by some of the most famous douchebags on the GOP side of the house, to investigate Islamic infiltrators in US government:
In what may be a watershed moment in the fight against radical Islam, five members of Congress have written letters to the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Defense, Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence asking for investigations of the Muslim Brotherhood influence in their agencies.
The five members of Congress are Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Tom Rooney (R-FL), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX). Collectively, they sit on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Armed Services Committee and Judiciary Committee …
Below is a sample email you can send to your representative in Congress. You can easily find out who that is and get to his or her website by entering in your zip code at this link. Use their contact form to send your message.
Below is a sample letter you can send to them (copy & paste and then add your details):[sic]
Dear Representative [Name of Congressman]
I am contacting you to urge you to endorse the call made on June 13, 2012, by your colleagues — Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL), Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) — to launch an investigation into the influence of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups and individuals in the U.S. government.
These congressmen wrote letters requesting investigations by the Inspectors General of the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Defense, Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Each letter referenced concerning incidents related to the Muslim Brotherhood in the department or agency it was addressed to.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical Islamic group which supports terrorism worldwide and is using stealth jihad to install Sharia and undermine the freedoms we cherish here in the U.S.
As a voter in your district, I urge you to endorse their letters and show your concern about this important issue.
Mr. Tevlin, the Indiana student, said his exhaustive search for meaningful summer employment was so futile that he took a job cleaning toilets and septic tanks. “I think we’re in pretty deep trouble, and the future, as far as jobs, is not looking good at all.”
Ludicrous quote on Mitt Romney, Bain and the corporate downsizing that’s the equity biz:
When more is done with less throughout a market economy, billions of people are made better off, which only shows that firms like Bain are not vultures preying on the dead, but bees bringing the pollen of life from plant to plant.
There is so much good news that goes largely unreported that it makes me want to scream. As I write this, just a couple of days ago, a 14-year-old boy in Phoenix who was watching his three siblings at home shot a punk who busted through a door and pointed a gun at the young man.
This is an incredibly wonderful news story that should be the lead story on the evening network news. It should be the front-page story in the New York Times …
The real shame is that similar incredibly good news events happen every day countless times across America … When Americans use guns to stamp out evil, news reports are virtually nonexistent.
But today I’m screaming with joy.
Readers will note the many newspapers do, in fact, report shootings of this nature although it almost never makes the front page except at the very small town level.
“Smile, America … Good conquered evil in spite of the liberal anti-freedom agenda,” Nugent concludes. He reasons, if reason is the word to use, that one way to prosperity is to shoot more criminals outright.
I’ve never met a person, from the right, left or middle, who screams with joy upon hearing an anonymous story like this. There may be some satisfaction over a home invader getting a comeuppance.
Screaming with joy — now that’s psychotic behavior. Pity the copy editors who have to endure it weekly.
