- Now at your newstand – I love this mock-up of a tabloid cover that Bug girl found.
- Has the LHC destroyed the universe yet? Click here to find out. Thanks durnett.Â
- Ricky Gervais sees dead people – In his new movie, that is. The previews look good and of course Ricky Gervais is a genius, so I’m looking forward to this.
- Before evolution came prevolution – This is really breaking my pre-coffee brain. Thanks Steve.
Haven’t you heard? The Earth is being swallowed by a black hole right now! (via Twitter)
While the LHC hasn’t destroyed anything yet, the same can’t be said about doomsday criers.
@Yoo: Oh noes! :D
@Andrés Diplotti: Oh, man, that is so sad. :( And one reason of many that I think religion stinks: It promotes fear. Poor girl.
Mmm, primordial soup. It’s really just regular alphabet soup with only A, T, C and G, and bits of double-helix rotini.
@Steve: The article broke my brain so much that I forgot to credit you! Fixed now.
@Andrés Diplotti: Ugh, that’s terrible.
I just loved the smaller notice on that tabloid: “Did you pay attention?” :-)
Regarding the “Has The LHC Destroyed the World Yet”-site, for real nerd-humor take a look at the source-code for it. It actually tests this (in a tongue-in-cheek way). Also note the disclaimer…
@Amanda: Oh, it’s not all that bad. Once you sift through all the technical jargon, it boils down to: Given enough time and raw materials, life sorts itself out.
People committing suicide because they think they might die? WTF?
@Andrés Diplotti: Hmmm, now there’s a bit of a conundrum because religious wackaloons will credit their prayer (and not the laws of physics) for the LHC NOT consuming the planet.
The biggest threat of the LHC to these people is that it will create a black hole of scientific proof that will consume religious origins theories.
Religion kills.
I wonder what the apocalypse mongers are saying about the fact that a category 3 hurricane is currently headed for Crawford TX.
That pre-evolution study is cool. Dawkins gives a great description of how that might have occurred in “The Selfish Gene.”
Is it wrong to be tired of all this LHC publicity? I mean, at least it’s getting the LHC news out there, right? Even if no one actually paying attention to the really cool science.
I’m just cranky without coffee.
@Steve: Wonderful! I’m going to have to make that for dinner sometime!
Hmm, I usually don’t get too upset by reading news article comments… but the amount of anti-science sentiment I’ve seen expressed in LHC articles today is really distressing. Scientists are being branded as elitists who are going to destroy the world because they know better than us “plain, simple, and honest folk”. The idea that there are places scientists dare not explore is just a throwback to the days when they printed maps of unexplored territory that said “Here there be dragons”. I hate the way our society is constantly using the word “elitist” as an insult on anyone with an education (thanks Karl Rove). Nevermind the fact that these same people continue to enjoy the benefits of inventions and discoveries made possible by the work of elitists like James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday. If this were 1850 they would be claiming that electromagnetism has no practical application to our daily lives and that the money and time spent researching it would be better spent on “civilizing” the colonies, or fighting the Russian Menace in the Crimean War.
For the rest of the week I’m going to stick to reading pro-science articles. I wonder what the Saturn probe is up to these days…
I talked to two people who saw a preview of ‘Ghost Town’ and they were very disappointed (being fans of the original Office series). I have to admit that the preview did not impress me much either, so I will probably netflix it.
I reluctantly recommend ‘Henry Poole is Here.’ Although I think the writer/director tried to sit on the fence between the skeptical and the “magical thinking” points of view, with one particular element of the plot, I think we went a little to far toward the latter. Nonetheless, my skeptical friends in my indie-film group either vehemently loved it or vehemently hated it, which is to me, the sign of a worthy film (i.e., vehemence).
The best part of hasthelhcdestroyed…yadda yadda .com is that the results are actually a program, not just text.
“if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == “undefined”)) {
document.write(“YUP.”);
} else {
document.write(“NOPE.”);
}”
I do love my doomsday notifications to come with guarantees as well
“if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn’t yet updated
please email mike at frantic dot org to receive a full refund “