. Cross posted at the Algemeiner. I wrote the other day how most physicists who speak of it are uncomfortable with the label “God” particle for the Higgs boson particle, the existence of which scientists at CERN confirmed on Wednesday. The rather casual, sensationalistic origin of the label clarifies that discomfort, as does, I suspect, unsurprising scientific worry that too conventional […]
Male Genital Enhancement
. This essay originally appeared in The Times of Israel, July 3, 2012. Is it too fanciful to imagine that Germany might wait, say, a thousand years, the length of an eponymously termedTausendjähriges Reich, before any governmental body in that country could feel sufficiently conscientiously liberated as to actually restrict a Jewish religious rite, i.e. […]
I Am a Man: When American Indians Were Recognized as People Under U.S. Law
. This is the story I have meant to share. You had to know the story of the Massacre of the Cheyenne first. That took place at Fort Robinson, Nebraska on January 9, 1879. This story, and these events, played out only months later, in Omaha, Nebraska, in the spring of 1879. Though I draw on […]
Eating Poetry (XXXVII) – The New Physics
THE NEW PHYSICS Al Zolynas for Fritjof Capra And so, the closer he looks at things, the farther away they seem. At dinner, after a hard day at the universe, he finds himself slipping through his food. His own hands wave at him from beyond a mountain of peas. Stars and planets dance with molecules […]
The Real “God” Particle
I hate trooping off in a gang. Scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN believe they have confirmed the existence of what others have called the “God particle.” Everyone exclaims “Higgs boson!” But I cry out “neutral B-meson” to that. I understand that for physicists, this discovery completes and substantiates the “Standard Model,” by which they currently […]