I’m growing increasingly disappointed with the Large Hadron Collider. Not only has it failed to create any world-ending black holes, but now the damn thing is totally broken.
Look, I know a machine that is 27Km long and accelerates protons to near-lightspeed is pretty complex. But surely you can keep the thing running for more than two weeks. Of course, considering how well the average computer works, it’s a wonder the thing got going at all.
In any event, the LHC should be back online in spring of 2009, to continue its search for the elusive Higgs Boson, which incidentally sounds like a character from a 19th century romance novel. Until then, enjoy this super nerdy yet oddly hypnotic LHC rap.
In these troubled times, most people have accepted that our drinking water is less than pure. A few centuries of unbridled human industrial activity, and some schmutz is bound to get in there. But there’s a vague confidence that the powers-that-be are working to keep the really dangerous stuff from coming out of your tap.
You’d think rocket fuel- explosive, toxic rocket fuel- would be one of those things. The Environmental Protection Agency begs to differ.
Ammonium Perchlorate is a very toxic and highly volatile explosive used to blast things out of our atmosphere and into space. It is also frighteningly present in the USA’s water supply. The chemical has been found in “395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses”.
And, here’s what a factory full of Ammonium Perchlorate looks like when it explodes:
So, you’d think the government would be falling all over itself to get this out of their citizen’s water. Nope. Today, the EPA announced they would not mandate a cleanup of the toxin. Said EPA spokesman Benjamin Grumbles (Best. Spokesman name. Ever):
“We know perchlorate in drinking water presents some degree of risk, and we’re committed to working with states and scientists to ensure public health is protected and meaningful opportunities for reducing risk are fully considered.”
Apparently, “removing the chemical from water” does not fall into the realm of “meaningful opportunities for reducing risk”. Which is funny, because that would be #1 on my list.
So why the reluctance? Well, the primary user of perchlorate in the USA is the Pentagon. And if the EPA mandated a cleanup, then the government would be on the hook for a multi-billion dollar project. Not surprisingly, the government department with all the guns and missiles gets its way over the government department filled with powerless ninnies.
So, the next time your drinking water destroys your thyroid, deforms your children or just plain ol’ explodes, thank the EPA.
New research out this week indicates that people who startle easily and react strongly to spiders tend to favour public policies that emphasize law and order, fighting terrorism and restricting immigration. In short: the nervous and twitchy tend to vote conservative.
The study, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), tested 46 people who identified themselves as having strong political opinions. Researchers showed subjects threatening visual images–pictures of a spider on a person’s eyeball, a dazed person with a bloody face and an open wound with maggots in it–and monitored their skin for electrical conductivity, which indicates emotion, arousal and attention. In another physiological measure, the scientists surprised subjects with a sudden, jarring noise and measured how hard they blinked in response to being startled.
“Those with the strongest eye or skin reactions to unexpected noises or threatening pictures such as a spider on a person’s eyeball tended to endorse political positions that were interpreted as protective of social groups,” said John Hibbing, professor of political science at UNL.
Hibbing defined those “protective policies” as more defense spending, more government resources directed at fighting terrorism and tighter controls on immigration. “People in this group are more willing to sacrifice a little of their privacy to protect the social unit,” Hibbing said. “On the other hand, the subjects who reacted less strongly to the stimuli were more likely to favor policies that protect privacy and encourage gun control.”
The upshot: if you scare easily, Stephen Harper has some policies you may be interested in. Of course, this research opens the door to some new campaigning tactics for the beleagured NDP and Liberals. A well-cooridnated national campaign of hiding behind bushes and startling passing Conservative staffers and candidates may entirely disrupt the CPC’s ability to effectively communicate in public.
On the other hand, how’s this for a new Harper slogan: The Conservative Party of Canada: Pandering to Scaredy-Cats since 2003. That’ll play like gangbusters in the sticks.
French performance artist Don Jean Habrey, aka Hors Humain, claims he will reveal Nessie on December 24, 2008. But while other monster hunters have used sonar and underwater cameras to search for the legendary cryptid, HH will use “chants, drumming, burning flares and bonfires round the shore”. He calls the whole to-do a ‘sacred collision’. Sounds very spiritual, if a little dangerous.
As a warm-up, HH will be diving into the chilly waters of Loch Ness this weekend to “breathe with the monster to send ultimate breathing to the world of childhood”. I’m not ever sure that’s a sentence, but it sounds pretty groovy.
Hors Humain previously “breathed” with Nessie in 1994, when he dove into the Loch “to breathe behind closed doors with Nessie together with a horde of children”. I’m not sure where he found this horde of amphibious youngsters, but if they’re local I’m surprised Scotland doesn’t have a better olympic swim team.
In any event, get your tickets now. And don’t forget to book early for my upcoming attempt to summon Bigfoot with a combination of balloon animals, silly hats, and old-school beatboxing. Via Museum of Hoaxes.
Never in the history of American presidential elections has a VP candidate so overshadowed her running mate. And overshadower-in-chief Sarah Palin seems to agree:
A “Palin and McCain” administration? Probably a slip of the tongue, but it’s a fairly accurate representation of the current state of John McCain’s campaign. Even when those pesky social conservatives can’t get a candidate nominated, they still manage to hijack the agenda. Kinda makes you wonder if there hasn’t been a mini-coup within the Republican Party.
I’ve been saying it for months, but it’s nice to get some official, NGO confirmation. When it comes to democracy, the Chavez presidency has been a bad thing for Venezuela.
A damning report by Human Rights Watch reveals that all those nice things about democratic governance – a free press, vibrant civil society, and indepedent courts – have all suffered under Chavez’s rule. Of course, mushy-headed Chavez apologists will no doubt write this off as more American propaganda. But consider this: Human Rights Watch frequently issues even more scathing reports against Colombia, an American ally.
So perhaps it’s time for the left to stop making excuses for Chavez. The man is a dictator, plain and simple.
Harold Varmus, a Nobel prize winner who headed the National Institutes of Health. He’s been active in tackling global health issues and defending the American Constitution from the religious right;
Gilbert Omenn, a staunch defender of evolutionary theory. Quoth the doctor: ““The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming. I would worry that a president who didn’t believe in the evolution arguments wouldn’t believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin;”
Peter Agre, another Nobel prize winner who used his prize money to fight restrictions on academic freedom imposed by the War on Terror;
Don Lamb, an astrophysicist and expert in stellar evolution. He’s a big proponent of space exploration.
Sharon Long, a former MacArthus fellow and leader of the National Academy of Sciences.
Nice to see some pretty high-watt names in there. Because only one thing is going to get us out of the environmental and economic straits we’re in: science. Not god, not Jesus, not creationism in schools, not John McCain, not Sarah Palin. Just science.
