The team, known as the D Zero collaboration and numbering some 600 physicists from 19 countries and 88 institutions, will not even say whether there is a bump in its data until the scientists have decided for sure that it is nature calling and not just a random statistical fluctuation.And:
D Zero is the younger of two rival detectors at the accelerator. The other, known as the Collider Detector Facility, or C.D.F., was built and staffed by an equally large group that is scouring its own data for the Higgs and other new phenomena.More:
The race is further complicated on the American side by the rivalry between the C.D.F. and D Zero groups. Earlier this summer, Fermilab had to schedule a pair of back-to-back seminars so each group could announce its own discovery of a new particle, a combination of quarks called the cascade-b.Oh, snap!
Dr. Konigsberg, of the rival team, said they had their own analysis of their own b-quark measurements underway. He compared the rumor to a game of telephone that “starts one way, ends up the other.”Them physicists are straight gangsta macks, 187 on the Higgs boson, son.
Courtesy of my good friend Joe Gordon:So I went to this place called the White Star Tavern on Saturday. It's a dive down by Drake Field. A guy at work told me about it and says that he goes there all the time. A few of us from work, Todd, my colleague in employee relations, my old boss Robert, and Brent, our guide, went for the sheer hell of it. And let me tell you, if Roger's Rec [a filthy Fayetteville bar—ed.] is a 6 on a 10-scale of nasty redneck bar-dom, the White Star was a good 8.5 if not 9.I should say so. Here's to broke-down bars and mop-handle pool cues. Long may they live.
It's one of those places where, when the door opens, you immediately go from blazing sunlight to smoky, neon-lit ambiance. The Johnny Paycheck song blasting from the jukebox seems to be turned down and all conversations cease when a stranger (me) walks in. Robert was already there, so I strolled over to him at the bar and then ordered a Busch (not Busch Light) in a bottle. They only serve beer ($2 anything) and they only take cash. The music seemed to get back to it's normal level and the conversations resumed. Soon after taking a pull on my beer, a gentleman also by the name of Joe asked me if I wanted to play pool. And, if I did, I had to use the cue he was offering to me: an old mop handle with blue chalk rubbed over the nub end. I politely declined, but Joe gave me the crook eye nonetheless. We took a seat at a table. At one point a sign fell from the wall revealing the sole window in the place allowing sunlight to stream in. The crowd at the far table erupted in jeers toward the bartender who quickly ran over and wedged the old metal Budweiser sign back in place, thus calming the rowdy redneck vampires. I stayed for about an hour and a half, had four beers and then left. Quite an adventure.
... look a bit malevolent? It’s like a conspiracy cabal meeting of pillows and chairs. Or it’s like the Simpsons wherein the babies at the day care stage a coup d’etat and liberate all the pacifiers from the locker. And then when Homer, Bart and Lisa come to pick up Maggie, they creep tentatively through the day care and then back out slowly, carefully, through the piles and piles of staring, satiated babies all sucking with a wet, echo-y sound on their pacifiers.
Hi all. The above is a pic of me at Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard, after a 20-mile bike ride that wore my ass out. Note the clay cliffs in the background—they're really cool, all different colors.
Today is my last day at Vault. It's been a good run; I had fun.I had a goatee at the time. The trip was two weeks—down the Eastern Seaboard, through the South and Texas, and into the Southwest, where we hiked the Valley of the Gods, Zion National Park, and more. I smoked up in the desert among the prickly pears with one of the bus’s drivers (named "Razz") and wandered real high through Carlsbad Caverns.
The last stop on the trip before dropping folks off in Bakersfield and continuing on up to San Francisco, where Green Tortoise is based, was Vegas. I had never been to Vegas before. Like I said, I had a goatee at the time, and had not shaved for the whole two weeks—so I was looking pretty scruffy. I thought it’d be good for a joke to shave my shit off and have only a mustache in Vegas, so at a gas station outside of town I bought some Bic razors and shaving cream. Put it in a brown paper bag and, when we got to the Strip, went with my brown paper bag into a very nice, plush bathroom in the Bellagio, right off the casino floor.
Now, I’d been on a bus for two weeks, so I was pretty rough-looking. So I’m in the bathroom of the Bellagio, people coming in and out, and I lather up my face and get to cuttin’. And cutting, my friends, it was. I dunno if you’ve ever tried to shave off a full beard with a Bic razor, but it don’t work so good. But anyway, I get about halfway done—I’m bleeding all over the place—and suddenly I realize how sketchy this looks: like I’d just fucked over some people at the poker table and was now trying to change my appearance.
They didn’t call security on me, though, so I finished “shaving”—more like hacking through jungle underbrush with a dull No. 2 pencil—and emerged, fully mustachioed, into the cool Bellagio. I took up with the curly-headed girl in black that I was hollerin’ at and we went to play blackjack. The mustache stayed for the rest of the trip and has stayed since (save for one drunk night on a dare).
Every once in awhile, a rumor would make its way around town—town being McMurdo Station, on Antarctica’s Ross Island—that a penguin or two had wandered into our rough-hewn hamlet. Not being accustomed to seeing much besides humans locomote in these environs, our ears would prick at these reports and we’d rush out on break from the galley to see the little Adelies in their self-important huff and waddle.
The short, fat little black and white birds looked like nattily attired, curious tourists as they poked their beaks around town and we humans watched, rapt, but kept our distance. The best way, though, to see an Adelie was when out on the white, flat, endless expanse of sea ice when you’d see one rushing, Alice and Wonderland White Rabbit-style, headlong toward some very important date for which the bird was, invariably, late.
Other than the Adelie (our immediate corner of the continent lacked the Emperor and Chinook penguins found elsewhere on the Ice), our only other oft-seen cohabitants were the seals and the skua birds.
The seals—fat, grey, impassive yet, in a way, graceful creatures—you’d see sunning and lazing in groups of three or four out on the sea ice. Sometimes pups—from their happy, near dog-like faces you’d understand why they were called that—would be with the adults, who would raise up from their flop and look at you purposefully if you got too close. But we rarely got too close, out of respect for the wild environment and the Antarctic Treaty.
Lastly, the skua birds, or just skuas, were scavengers that looked a bit like dirty gulls and had no natural predators, and so were utterly unafraid of humans. They would walk right up to you, entirely unruffled—or, more likely, if you were carrying food, divebomb you, Ride of the Valkyries-style, when walking between buildings. They were ornery neighbors, but we took it all in stride and enjoyed the chance to see these charming, sometimes cantankerous beasties in their natural habitat—after all, we were the visitors; they, unlike we humans, could survive and indeed thrive on that harsh continent.
... if you haven't yet seen the final episode of The Sopranos.But, he lived; and things were going pretty well for him and his immediate family there at the end. And that's life, that's what David Chase & Co. have been trying to tell us (among other things) all along: the universe does not punish bad deeds or reward good ones; it is what it is, and there's no old man up in the sky throwing lightning bolts or sending bread from heaven, however much we may want to believe that.
I think that what Tony "got" during his peyote trip out in the desert was that, yes, there is another plane of existence, another something out there, but—like the sun that flashed at him, it is indifferent to what we do on this earth. We may come from somewhere, but whatever that somewhere is doesn't have any feelings one way or the other about what we do here. This was the only true way The Sopranos, given its entire preceding run, could have ended—no matter how many red herrings David Chase threw us along the way.
Congratulations to everyone who has been involved in this incredible show—which, if I may be so bold, deserves to be mentioned alongside such great and timeless works of art as Ulysses, Guernica, Citizen Kane, et al. Job well—and, most importantly, honestly—done to the very end.
At some point everyone should attend at least one just to experience the experience. Kinda like eating Jello—perhaps fun while being slurped but not too satisfying afterwards—but, hell, it ain’t natural to live in America and not experience Jello.Well said, Dad.
OK, so, Mayor McCheese. No big deal, right? Look more closely.
