Amazing machine...

...built to search for "The God Particle" and featured in National Geographic. Be sure to check out the photo gallery.

Unintended Consequences

From Wired - Evolution Wins as Creationists (Accidentally) Switch Sides in Florida. Apparently those who thought that a "scientific theory" means something less than it does have now got a curriculum that must teach the "scientific theory of evolution." That's the result of believing in your own erroneous rhetoric.

Heh.

Content and Style

David Armano blogs that he has learned a few things from politics, one of which is that...

3. Words do matter. The delivery of them matters even more.

This brings to mind one of my all-time favorite quotes about communication...

"It is content, or rather the consciousness of content, that fills the void. But the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that gives content the capacity to absorb us, to move us; it is style that makes us care." - Tom Robbins (from Another Roadside Attraction)

Nice to see when people get up in arms about something

"Squeezed in?" subway ad angers passengers.

I was in Beijing 2 years ago. The last thing they need is people abandoning their subway for cars.

New Jersey Geo-demographics

With a brief exception, I've lived in a 20-mile radius in New Jersey for my whole life (so far) - Middlesex and southern Somerset County - an area, along with Mercer and Monmouth Counties, that is pretty safe to consider "Central Jersey", in geography as well as character (more suburban than northeast, less rural than northwest and south). However, those in North or South Jersey often ignore "Central" and consider it South or North, respectively. Came across a good comment on another view of this "issue" on a Real Barbecue in Central Jersey thread on Chowhounds...

I've long maintained that, for many people, "central Jersey" is located between Englewood and Wildwood, mostly because few want what they perceive as the stigma of being in "south Jersey" (Pineys!) or "north Jersey" (decayed urban rustbelt!) - "northwest Jersey" gets pass, of course, for the 12 people who live there. It's like "middle class" in America- which is, apparently, someone who does not qualify for welfare yet can't afford their own learjet.

Why Obama Matters

While McCain's always been pretty much the only interesting Republican to me, he's a half-generation older and IMHO past his prime time (2000).

Clinton is an extension of my older boomer cohort that resulted in disappointment under Bill and disaster under Bush. She's also deeply embedded in the divisions of the last decade or so; divisions we need to get past. (This is the first time my wife and I are divided politically - she sees Clinton's experience and connections as a benefit - I see them as problems, or at least the source of more divisive obstacles to success.)

Obama's a half a generation younger, and not tied to the old boomer paradigms and prejudices, as Andrew Sullivan points out in Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters

....if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.

Read the whole thing. Sometimes symbolism is important. This is one of those times.

SFO - Another One for the Loss Column

TSA Now Requiring All Electronic Items Placed In Bins at SFO - Idiots.

Afganistan - One for the Loss Column

Afghan Student Sentenced to Death After Downloading Report:

"A 23-year-old student journalist in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death for downloading and distributing a report that is critical of the oppressive treatment of women in some Islamic societies."

Sigh...