Dear The Inter­nets, Please be advised that, although the Large Hadron Col­lider will be pow­ered up on Wednes­day, no high-​​​​energy col­li­sions are sched­uled until Novem­ber. It really upsets me to see peo­ple, includ­ing the news media report­ing tomorrow’s ini­tial power-​​​​up as “the most com­plex sci­en­tific exper­i­ment ever under­taken” (from the first link) when in fact it is not. The claims that the LHC will destroy the world are pure lunacy. But please, all you cra­zies out there, if you’re going to get all het up about the end of the world, it is very impor­tant that you get your dates straight. [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

I have dis­cov­ered the secret of high blog traf­fic! Since I posted about this week’s episode of House, M.D., my hits have quadru­pled. Appar­ently, many peo­ple want to know about the phrase writ­ten on the chalk­board behind House in the class­room where he grilled his 40 or so can­di­dates: Tesla was Robbed! The phrase appears alone on the board early in the episode. But later in the episode, House writes the fol­low­ing above it: SYNRBCTACHPANIC for synes­the­sia, red blood count, tachy­car­dia and panic attacks. These lat­ter are part of House’s diag­nos­tic pro­ce­dure. He’s using the chalk­board instead of the old white­board [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...