In Geneva It's A Go

In today's really big news, or rather small news, the Large Hadron Collider finally starting smacking protons together today.

Two beams of protons were sent hurtling in opposite directions toward each other in a 17-mile tunnel below the Swiss-French border — the coldest place in the universe at slightly above absolute zero.

"Coldest place in the universe"? Please. And how would we know that, Mr. Journalist?

This is a 10 billion dollar project. No one's really sure what will come out of it. They will tell you that they are testing hypotheses, and that's true, but what they are mainly doing is setting up a whole new class of high-energy observations.

Every time we smash tiny things together faster, we are hugely surprised by what happens.

Some of the stuff you hear in learned lectures
turns out to be the thinnest of conjectures.

Go Ahead

I'm thinking of organizing the Doormat Party.

Revolted by revolution?
Submission is the solution!

The Devil's Pool

Victoria Falls, in Africa, is twice as high as Niagara falls. At the top it, right at the edge, is a swimming hole:

A famous feature is a naturally formed pool known as the Devil's Pool, near the edge of the falls, accessed via Livingstone Island. When the river flow is at a safe level, usually during the months of September and December, people can swim as close as possible to the edge of the falls within the pool without continuing over the edge and falling into the gorge; this is possible due to a natural rock wall just below the water and at the very edge of the falls that stops their progress despite the current.

Video:


Great still shots here.

I think I might be too chicken to try this.

It's a great sight,
but - oh - the height!

Have Our Money Ready!

A couple of would-be Connecticut bank robbers decided it was best to call ahead.

So they picked up the phone and told the bank they were on their way - and to have the money ready! Unfortunately, the bank called the cops.

Instead of getting the cash
they had requested,
all their hopes were dashed
and they got arrested.

Circles

I didn't see this stone circle personally, but I saw another like it in Ireland. They are feats of stone age engineering.

They piled huge stones upon the hill
and to this day they stand
in perfect circles arranged
mysteriously planned
and minimally changed
since the old days when
those very ancient men
worked their determined will
upon the waiting land.

Wonderful New Product

Picture worth a thousand words:


Yes, it's a back flap for cats & dogs:

Is your pet feeling left in the dirt because of his/her unsightly rear? I’ve got them covered... Rear Gear is handmade in Portland, OR and offers a cheerful solution to be-rid your favorite pet’s un-manicured back side.

We have more than one pet
so I should buy a batch,
however I haven't yet
figured out how they attach.

I Hope PETA Comes To His Defense

Today's sad story comes from Pennsylvania, where a man tried to breathe new life into a dead possum:

Trooper Jamie Levier of the Punxsutawney barracks said witnesses saw Wolfe, 55, locking lips with the lifeless marsupial about 3 p.m. in a remote area about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

After receiving several calls, troopers arrested Wolfe along an isolated stretch of the highway and charged him with public drunkenness.

An overdose of alcohol would never
lure me into such a bold endeavor.

Serious Monkey Business

Do you have a service monkey?

Not the old-fashioned organ grinder kind...

...the serious modern kind who help people with disabilities, from agoraphobia to devastating spinal cord injuries.

You may have been wondering what the TSA procedures were for searching your monkey.



Wonder no more!

# Security Officers have been trained to not touch the service monkey during the screening process.

# Security Officers will conduct a visual inspection on the service monkey and will coach the handler on how to hold the monkey during the visual inspection.

But don't say, "Listen, flunky,
keep your hands off my monkey!"

Perelman Refuses

The Fields Medal is the most prestigious prize for work in Mathematics. It is awarded once ever 4 years.

One man won it and refused it: Grigory Perelman, a Russian, who lives with his mom in St. Petersburg.

Now some U.S. institute wants to give him a million bucks.

Again, he refuses.

The mathematician is reported to have said "I have all I want" when contacted by a reporter this week about the Clay Millennium Prize.

According to the UK's Daily Mail newspaper, he was speaking through the closed door of his flat.

Leave him alone!

Just get out of his path,
and let him work on math.

Gigantic Quantum Computer

Latest wildly speculative physics theory:

In Decoding Reality, Vedral argues that we should regard the entire universe as a gigantic quantum computer. Wacky as that may sound, it is backed up by hard science. The laws of physics show that it is not only possible for electrons to store and flip bits: it is mandatory. For more than a decade, quantum-information scientists have been working to determine just how the universe processes information at the most microscopic scale.

As Tim Shell suggested to me, this sounds like Newton's Clockwork Universe theory, with the technology updated.

Jeffrey Small figures he now has an explanation of the Big Bang - it happens when the computer tries to divide something by zero.

Divide zero in the code,
and existence will explode,
creating an infinity
of stuff in the vicinity.

Cassandra's Chorus

This is who you encounter as you enter Dream Theatre's current show, Agamemnon.

Here's the short video of the preshow.

I've seen it 3 times and I'm going with Marsha the weekend.

Here's a review roundup:

Ian Epstein at Chicago Theatre Blog

Chris Arnold at Steadstyle Chicago

Tony Adler in the Chicago Reader

Me, here

A clever torture, by a god conceived:
she saw the future - but no one believed.

A Failure Of Our Educational System

A young man bungles a burglary:

Investigators said the 17-year-old logged into his MySpace account while at Bella Office Furniture and that made it easy for them to find him. He also spent time looking at pornography and trying to sell stolen items, all while using the business' computer.

They tracked him down, of course.

Why is no one complaining?
Our burglars need more training!

Party Lines

My congressman was the only Illinois Democrat to vote against the big health bill. Maybe he simply followed his judgment. Maybe he followed the will of his constituents.

"Dan has a tremendous amount of resolve," Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) told me when we talked in the Capitol. "And great desire to vote what he considers to be in his district's interests. He often does not waver in his convictions."

One odd thing about this bill was that those in favor were strictly one-party. But the opposition was two-party.

One party domination
can result in abomination.

Historic

The Washington Post has an online headline:

The Take: Historic win or not, Democrats could pay a price

To me the only question is how high that price will be. And I get the impression it will be high.

Also, I'm tired of all this "historic" bluster.

Prohibition was historic.
The fate of booze seemed sealed.
But through public anger,
the damn thing was repealed.

Bad Luck Kitty

Here's an odd entrepreneurial idea, a "stress relieving vending machine":

The “Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine” is a machine that allows you break a dish or two until you feel better. All you have to do is insert a dollar, and a piece of china will slowly move towards you until it falls to the bottom and breaks into a million pieces.

If you track the links back, it seems to be the work of some artists. But I see commercial possibility!

Are you feeling too much stress?
Is your life a steamy mess?
Put some dough in the machine,
smash some china figurines
to smithereens!

Parachuting Pooch

This story features a great photo of a military bomb-sniffing dog jumping out of a plane with his handler:

"They don't perceive height difference the same way humans do, so that doesn't worry them. They're more likely to be bothered by the roar of the engines, but once we're on the way down, that doesn't matter and they just enjoy the view."

I'm skeptical about the height-perception claim. I think they perceive it just like we do - at normal ranges. You don't see dogs jumping off cliffs to their deaths.

I think the issue is that at 10,000 feet you don't really perceive the distance with your eyes. You just conceive of it mathematically with your mind.

The dog has superior power of smell,
but doesn't do math so well.

Direction Selection

We had a lively discussion tonight, which began with Dagny Taggart (from Atlas Shrugged), and the question of how you make moral judgments about other people, and how you communicate such judgments.

One interesting thing about Dagny is that she is exposed to the full set of striker arguments, but still goes back to the world. The strikers don't think she is evading the facts, they just think she has more to learn. This leads to the question, how did the strikers come to this particular conclusion? (It may help that 2 of the leaders of the strike are in love with her... but we didn't go there.)

Somehow we also ended up talking about, of all people, Barack Obama, and the widely varying views people have about who he really is, and what he really stands for.

Toward the end we were focused on globalization, unemployment, and the things the government has done to make hiring more risky and expensive for companies.

The discussion was wide-ranging.
It seemed like the topic kept changing!

Wish I Wasn't Along For The Ride

Half hit the brakes. Half stomp the gas.
Up, ahead, it's Demon Pass.

Teamwork

It's hard being a good dad:

Men involved with child care may hurt women's self-esteem

Should the father be the weak player on the team,
just to boost the mother's self-esteem?

Egri vs. Coward

I've been skimming The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, first published in 1942, and considered a classic in its field.

His 7th chapter is "Why are some bad plays successful?" and he tackles the problem, as he sees it, of Noel Coward's popularity:

A war-weary audience, surfeited with blood and death, gobbled up his farces. The lines seemed witty because they helped the audience to forget the battering the world had taken. Coward, and many like him, came and lulled the shocked audience into numbed relaxation. His reception today would be tepid.

In retrospect, this is funny, since Coward continues to appear on the stage, often to enthusiastic applause. And somehow his lines still "seem witty".

Egri glowered at Coward,
but Coward has not soured.