Smashing Atom

Like a smaller, more confused Paul Revere (not this Paul Revere), I keep warning of the threat posed by the Large Hadron Collider.  Last night, one of my Hadron Alert Posse (HAP) let me know that the December issue of Car and Driver featured the LHC.  Ever watchful, I went online today and found the following article description:

Smashing Atom: Ariel Atom V8 vs. Large Hadron Collider
Small, insanely fast, and superlight car takes on actual atoms.

Noteworthy, friends, is the fact that the description offers no hyperlink. The innocent explanation: Car and Driver wants to protect some of its content for subscribers. But you and I know better than to believe in the innocence of the LHC. I don't know what that foul boson-grubbing beast is up to, but we must maintain our vigilance. If we don't we might actually have to contemplate the stumbling start to William and Mary's hoops campaign. And nobody wants that.

Vigilance

Ignore the fact that this is an obvious April Fool's Day joke. That's EXACTLY what the Large Hadron Collider wants you to believe.

A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.

The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year.

Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was looking for fuel for his 'time machine power unit', a device that resembled a kitchen blender.

Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin. "Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening."

Gheorghasbord: Science Edition

You know I'm grasping for reasons not to watch the State of the Union when I actually pick up a keyboard and get back at it.

Couple of things from the realm of logic and rationality struck my fancy recently, which is a nice counterpoint from the world of fabulism and insanity we currently live in.

Physics Today asked the question, "What comes after the Large Hadron Collider?" in an article released earlier today. If they'd read this august scientific publication, they'd have known that it would've been funnier to posit "What comes after the Large Hadron Col







Because it's gonna kill us all, and everything.

CERN realllly needs to check the hubris, because it seems the LHC with its 27 km circumference just isn't big enough to sate the atom-smashing bloodlust of the big brains in Switzerland. Didn't they learn anything from Professor Jerry Hathaway's greed? Now CERN wants to build the Future Circular Collider, a 100km megamachine that'll tunnel under Lake Geneva on its way to blazing smoking holes across the quad at Pacific Tech. That seems like a good use of $27 billion.

Would you buy a used spaceship from this man?

On the other hand, if Professor Avi Loeb is right, we may need something to prove to our new alien a scientific journal article suggesting that an extraterrestrial spaceship (or a portion thereof) may well be flying across our solar system.
overlords that we're sufficiently advanced to warrant their friendship. Loeb, the sober-minded chair of Harvard's astronomy department, recently published

The object, named Oumuamua by the Hawaiian astronomers that first identified it in 2017, appears to be very large and very thin, like the sail of an enormous stellar sailboat. And we thought America's Cup technology had gotten out of control.

There's a silver lining in Loeb's telling, and I'm kinda down with it. “It changes your perception on reality, just knowing that we’re not alone. We are fighting on borders, on resources. . . . It would make us feel part of planet Earth as a civilization rather than individual countries voting on Brexit.”

Being part of planet Earth sounds pretty good right now. Sure beats whatever hellscape the 2019 scriptwriters have authored.

Public Service Announcement

We've been one of the internet's leaders in tracking the menace lurking in the Swiss countryside. Frankly, we're concerned that not enough of you are listening. Hear me when I tell you that the large hadron collider is still lurking, and this week it announced its intent in clear terms.

The Large Hadron Collider set a new record for the creation of energetic particle beams this morning. The particle accelerator, which surpassed Fermilab’s Tevatron in December as the baddest atom smasher of them all, smashed its own record, charging particles to 3.48 trillion electron volts.

"Energetic particle beams", people. "The baddest atom smasher of them all." This makes Sarah Palin's death panels look like a frolic in the local wolf-shooting helicopter park. How the nutbag right and Dennis Kucinich haven't been whipped into a righteous froth about this issue completely blows my mind.

Remain calm, ladies and gentlemen, but remain diligent. Our very survival may depend upon it.

Babel On

It's been nearly a year since we last heard from the Large Hadron Collider. And today, we find out why it's been so silent: it's gone Hollywood.

Courtesy of several members of the Hadron Alert Posse (HAP), we've learned that the LHC is starring in a major motion picture, released today in New York. Particle Fever follows six scientists as they participate in the LHC's voyage of scientific discovery (read: as they become its minions, footsoldiers in the battle for global hegemony).

The trailer below offers a glimpse into the inner workings of the LHC, purpose-built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)* to solve some of the most fundamental scientific mysteries of our time. While it all looks really impressive, two really discordant notes offer close observers clues into the LHC's diversionary mindgames.

First, in the trailer, the narration claims that CERN invented the internet so that scientists could share data across distances. This is so ludicrous as to give away the game - we all know that the internet was invented to share porn and spawn dipshittery.

If that weren't enough, the trailer notes that more than 10,000 people representing over 100 nationalities work at the LHC. The last time such a phenomenon came to be, God took umbrage at man's hubris, and cast him to the four corners of the Earth**.

And so, in Particle Fever, we see a mendacious, hubristic LHC in all its glory. It's been so obvious to us for so long. Now, the whole world will see it***.



* - Anyone else suspicious that the ostensible EORN goes by CERN? Why does nobody question this?

** - This may be a mistelling of the Tower of Babel story. It's been a while since I've read The Bible.

*** - I can NOT believe that Shlara didn't get me and Teej and invite to the screening of this film.

The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day 11

On the eleventh day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me...

Eleven Months of Blog Posts
Ten (ish) Gifts for Gheorghies
Nine Lists of Top 10 Things
Eight Wins Worth Noting
Seven Traits for Winning
Six Facts O'Ghoogling
Five Lasting Images
Four Things to Think About
Three catastrophe 'staches
The Finest Holiday Duet in History
And One Hell of a bloggy Par-ty

One of my favorite Gheorghemas activities, after the unveiling of the picture of Baby Teejus, is sitting down with a bit of wassail (in this case a Summit Oatmeal Stout), and a good playlist (the Pitchfork Best Songs of 2012 on Spotify) and reading through the year's posts. (You would NOT believe how much crap we post in a 12-month period. It's amazing the network hasn't cancelled us yet. Thank God for that small, yet vocal, group of influential women that dig our scene.)

Without fail, this annual exercise produces a mix of laughter, mild disgust, and genuine admiration for the work this extremely motley crew produced over the preceding annum. And so, without further ado, the Best of Gheorghe: The Blog 2012:

January was dominated by posts about the dreadful and completely unlikeable Washington Wizards and the equally dreadful but much more fan-friendly William & Mary Tribe. In the midst of that bleak blogscape, Dave managed to tear off an appreciation of Talking Heads' 'Once in a Lifetime' that both informed and engaged. And made us wistfully recall a time when he was a serial lizard murderer.

We also celebrated Squirrel Appreciation Day, which reminds me to remind you to mark January 21 on your calendars to celebrate this year's events. Mark, I take a size medium in most surf t-shirts.

Marcus Thornton gave us the first amazing moment of his career.

Lord in Heaven, I'd almost forgotten about the picture that accompanied our BCS Championship Game preview. I think it's the hat that does it for me.

Dave also gave us an appreciation of the digital first down line and, on January 3, provided the blogosphere's first 2012 Year in Review. So he peaked early. Which, yep.

In February, Teej rubbed electronic shoulders with a former Washington Bullet, which presaged the greatest moment on G:TB history by less than a month. Tracy Murray is a good sport.

We were all more than a little shocked when Clarence dropped a pissy (though probably warranted) rant about the Grammys. So out of character for this character.

Less than a week later, Clarence weighed in again (you'd better damn believe that pun is intended) with another lengthy (though not particularly girthy) Grantland review. The combined effort must have winded him, because I'm fairly sure he never wrote anything else all year long.

Mark waited until March to give us his first post of the year, but it was a good one, complete with a dope - as the kids say - playlist from his wedding.

On Monday, March 5, we told a story 19 years in the making. And even though our words and pictures were pretty good, they didn't do justice to the Night Gheorghe met Gheorghe. We'll do it again, if only to make sure Mark can make it this time. (And TR may have clinched the Oscar for Best Performance as a Recovering Urinatee.)

The most coherent post of Gheorghe: The Week was KQ and Shlara's retrospective of the Washington Bullets' criminally underrated 'You the Man' video.

We celebrated Rick Reilly. Really. (Skip the fact that the thing we celebrated was 9 years old. It was worth celebrating.)

We also celebrated vaginas. In a far less creepy way than we normally do.

Dennis posted! About babies, Catcher in the Rye, and The Shins. Hope he doesn't post again in 2013, or he'll be Octodad.

Our first post about conference realignment, the death of the CAA, and W&M's eventual move to the Patriot League surfaced late in the month. The Teej jumped in with Breaking News that turned out to be more wrong than a picture of a crocheted vagina on a Muslim kids blog.

TR turning heel on Joe Namath foreshadowed a shitshow of a Jets season.

Finally, Zman remained the internet's leading expert on the Jack Urbon/Ghostface legal kerfuffle.

Phew, March came in like a lion and tore that motherfucker up all month long. I don't expect it to keep up.

Three themes dominated April: squirrels, baseball, and art.

Our first picture of Tim Kurkjian's underwear accompanied our review of major league baseball's marketing slogans, which were predictably lame. Not so Clarence (who may have been Igor at the time) and Marls' preview of the Mets' 2012 campaign. Certainly, they'd agree that the preview was far more entertaining than the season.

Dave gave us his definitive list (and really, with Dave, is there any other kind of list?) of Seven Movies That Are Better Than The Book, and while he omitted 'The Green Mile', he turned in a solid effort. I can't wait for the film version.

Fugazi's Ian MacKaye gave us the G:TB Quote of the Alltime:

"I was cleaning my room once and I was listening to Led Zeppelin. Robert Plant was going on and on about all of these seemingly adult kind of things and I realized he was eighteen when he did that record—I was probably twenty-nine years old at the time—and I just thought, “Oh my god, I’m twenty-nine years old and I never became an adult.” Here’s Robert Plant and he’s eighteen and he’s singing about having his own apartment and running around town. To me, he seemed so adult. I called my dad and I said, “Dad, I’m kinda freaking out over here. I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m starting to realize that I’m a man, but I never made that transition.” And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you two things. First off, I see you as a man, as an adult man. You’re not a kid. And the second thing is that I can’t see myself as a man.” He was sixty at the time and he hadn’t come to terms with it either. It was nice and terrible at the same time to realize that that transition is a difficult one."

Clarence and I went back to back with posts about ukelele music and poetry. Badass ukelele music and poetry.

Thankfully, Mark redeemed the month with a long think piece about the NFL Draft. Footbaw!

Honestly, May was a pretty dismal month, both in terms of the quality of our output and the subject matter. The world lost both MCA, Maurice Sendak, and Chuck Brown (Duck Dunn, too), and we shared our sadness.

The CAA blew up, too, and while our initial assessment of W&M's athletic administration was probably overly simplistic and too harsh (if you think I feel bad about dissing Terry Driscoll after chatting with him about the subject at length, you're right - this is why I would make a terrible journalist), we're still nursing a post-heyday hangover. So, too, is #caahoops, apparently.

I cannot fucking believe I forgot about this picture when I did the Best Sports Photos of the Year.

The Teej inadvertantly killed Igor by celebrating America. And Whitney. I miss those guys.

At least we drew the month to a close in style, as TR recapped the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, featuring Fat Anthony Kiedis.

June saw us drop a mere 20 posts, the fewest of any month since December 2007. Nice work, lads.

Despite the lack of quantity, I submit to you that the (relative, because, c'mon, it's us we're talking about) quality was impressive - even the filler. Topics ranged from the serious (the use of the term 'hero' to describe military men and women and a tribute to a friend of mine who passed far too early) to the silly (pictures of my feet made a triumphant return), stopping at a burrito-making robot and an appreciation for LeBron's first title. Importantly, we also debuted the 'questionable mascot sexuality' tag. Huge SEO.

Mark started the month with a great read on the Thunder/Spurs Western Conference final, complete with albino James Harden photo, and finished it with a typically solid NBA Draft post. I'm far more happy about the fact that he recently acknowledged that I was right about Draymond Green. Blind squirrel, nut.

I usurped Clarence's role as resident music critic, reviewing Rhett Miller at Jammin' Java and the excellent and highly-recommended Big Easy Express.

We also continued to shake our heads in increasingly dumbfounded amazement as the War on Vaginas escalated.

I'm pretty proud of our resilience. After what must've been an exhausting June, we soldiered on, cranking out 21 posts in July. Warriors, we, the Kellen Winslow, Jr. kind.

Fully five of those posts celebrated, in one form or another, the event of the Gheorghian social season. It was a glorious mess, full of foreign accents, silliness, awkward social interactions, and barely remembered late night grease. Wait, that was just Greg's part. In actual fact, Doofus Wedding was one of the most heartfelt celebrations of love and friendship this grizzled correspondent has ever attended.

One of the more unexpected events of the year occurred in the week before the wedding festivities, when Clarence professed his admiration for Mike Love. This ranks just slightly below Wayne Lapierre being found to have a heart on the list of unlikely happenstances.

In more prosaic news, Dave got a dog. If you haven't read the story of the interaction between Dave, his dog, two garbage cans, and three lesbians, I insist you stop what you're doing and click this link. It might be the single most guffaw-inducing moment in G:TB history.

Summer Dave put his free time to additional good use, proving the existence of the Higgs Boson by...interviewing it. Bet those CERN pointyheads feel pretty stupid about spending all that money on the Large Hadron Collider now.

Speaking of the Collider (which we only did 4 times this year - we're clearly going to need to devote more resources to the project in 2012, if the fucking Republicans in Congress can get their act together and resolve our budget issues), it gave us one of the year's best typographical errors.

Gheorghe: The Nation fielded our first-ever Olympic team, and while we didn't medal, we did have the tallest flagbearer. In other Olympic news, we were among the first major news outlets to predict glory for Gabby "The Flying Squirrel" Douglass. Honestly, prescience like ours should be licensed to protect the innocent.

August is generally one of our lamer months, both as a society and a blog. In our consistency, we did not disappoint. Our August was a mishmash of filler (in one case, we just posted a bunch of the stuff we'd left lingering in drafts - I assume it was a statement on the ephemeral nature of art. Or just really lazy.), video clips, Doofus Honeymoon photos, and dumb fashion.

We did manage to continue to raise awareness of stupid male behavior, international version, as we highlighted the Pussy Riot story.

FOG:TB Marls heralded the great news of the Mars Curiosity Lander's challenge to the Large Hadron Collider's scientific supremacy.

Wan Joon Kim, y'all, the Gangsta Godfather.

Oh, and after years of idle threats, I quit the Redskins.

As ambivalent as our efforts may have been over the summer months, September was a revelation. We were entertaining as shit. By my count, 21 of the 27 posts were at least above average by our standards, an amazing batting average. Even some of the filler was high quality (Taylor Morris, once again) Hell, I don't even have space to highlight two fine college football posts from Mark. In fact, I recommend you peruse the entire month. But in the event you've only got half an hour to kill rather than an afternoon, you'll enjoy these posts:

One Man's Fan Free Agency Journey concluded with the selection of the New Orleans Saints as my new NFL rooting interest. It hasn't exactly been a success on the field. But I move on, stoic in my resolution.

Zman delivered another in a long line of excellent tennis posts, this time a requiem for Andy Roddick's career. He was fated to be an afterthought in the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic era, but he was a massive talent, and a seemingly good dude.

TR entertained with a story of a sporting odyssey, capped with a keeper of a photo. Almost certainly the highlight of the season for the Jets.

Bob Mould rocked, Snoop talked politics, and we learned how to execute a proper snot rocket.

We debuted Music Mondays with Shlara, to much critical acclaim. People liked it so much that we did it again a week later.

Wheelhouse Geoff gave us one of the better Ryder Cup previews you'll find anywhere on the dipshit side of the interwebs, and likely anywhere at all.

You guys remember when we didn't have the real NFL referees? Clarence does - his expert roundtable closed the month in style.

October, as you might imagine, was a bit of a letdown after September's rocket ride to glory.

The little guy was celebrated, as we championed Taylor Heinicke's Heisman campaign (he did win the much more prestigious Walter Payton award) and Adam Greenberg's Field of Dreams moment.

We had zMusic and zLaw, equal measures excellent. And zBills, which was nothing so much as a cry for help.

Shlara gave us a serious post on Lance Armstrong's inevitable exposure as a cheat, and a far-less-serious post in which she self-identified as a cougar. You don't get this kind of range anywhere else in the blogosphere.

While this post about FOG:TB Mike Litos' career move was a solid one, the comments are a great chronicle of the Gheorghe community's experience with Superstorm Sandy.

Our GOP friends were unwise enough to come at me in an election wager. And dumb enough across the nation to give Republicans a majority in the House. Not really dumb enough, actually, just gerrymandered enough.

Our Washington Wizards season preview was as awful as the team turns out to be. Foreshadowing, as it turns out. (Get it?)

And then there was November, in which we did the right thing as a nation, and returned Joe Biden to Washington. 

The Brothers Murray are American treasures and should be celebrated at every opportunity.

I'm pretty proud of the 'Nate Silver is a many splendored manbeast' metatag.

Dave's post-Sandy story was a great read.

In an upset, we were optimistic about the 2012-13 William & Mary hoops season. #1bid4wmtribe!

And in less of a surprise, Dave both defended his Scary Story Contest title and wrote about it using a completely different font than the one cleared for use by the G:TB Brand Management team.

We outed Clarence as a poet, enabling us to use the 'badass poetry' tag again. Also an upset.

We also outed Danimal as an athlete, raconteur, and prince among men.

Clarence closed the month with a post about booze. Another in a line of really surprising things.

We'll finish the year with 305 or so posts, and while it's a bit of a down year in terms of quantity, there was a lot to like. Apologies if I left out one of your favorites. This is hard goddamn work. Much love to the entire Community of Gheorghes. Feel free to excoriate me in the comments, and have a Gheorghey New Year.

The Boundless Influence of Gheorghe

For such a seemingly inconsequential little filler/dipshittery purveyor, Gheorghe: The Blog has made an outsized impact on the larger world. As Clarence has repeatedly pointed out (via the comments section, naturally, so there's no link I can use to prove the notion), the editors of Grantland routinely scour G:TB for new ideas. And it's pretty obvious that we turned Sports Illustrated on to Elena Delle Donne's greatness. A whole anti-CERN cottage industry has sprung up around our coal mine canary efforts regarding the Large Hadron Collider.

After those and other influential campaigns, we've turned our efforts to a far more fundamental pursuit. We're changing math.

In partnership with Briton Rob Eastaway, our very own Zman has pioneered an entirely new way to think about computation. Friends, we give you zequals ().

Let's allow Eastaway to offer a description:

Zequals means you have to reduce any number to a single significant figure, followed by Zeroes (so the Z is for Zeroes, and also for the ZigZagness of the symbol).  For example 67 becomes 70, and the calculation 7 x 8 = 56 becomes 7 x 8 60.

Ultimately, zequals is extremely valuable when precision is less important than general directional sense. If we need to know roughly how many cans are in 18 cases of beer, 400 is good enough. If I need to figure out whether my kid's 98.8 degree temperature requires a trip to the doctor, 100 is probably a bit imprecise. But as Eastaway himself notes, "Many people develop the knack of estimating when they discover a real need for it: business people assessing the viability of a project, engineers looking at how long a job is going to take. In these examples, it’s the ballpark figure that’s important, not the number to its third decimal place."

Eastaway explains the concept in more detail in the video below. And while he doesn't credit Zman, we'll not take offense. We all know the truth, and that's good enough for us.

G:TB Works the Poll

The legend of G:TB appears to be spreading. We were approached last week by Mat Shelton of VCU Ram Nation to participate in a CAA Bloggers' Poll of the league's teams, no doubt because of our in-depth analysis of pseudonymic Jets/Bills fans and the threat posed by the Large Hadron Collider*.  Unfortunately, the poll requires us to actually think critically about the CAA's teams, so our contribution may skew the overall results, given that the other contributors include such CAA experts as Michael "MGL" Litos of CAA: Life as Mid-Major fame, Brian Mull of the Wilmington Star News, and Jerry Beach of Defiantly Dutch.

We're not one to shrink from a challenge, though, so we leapt at the chance. The first week's results follow, with number of first-place votes in parentheses (we were the lone VCU first-place vote, on the strength of their performance at Alabama):

1. Northeastern (3)

2. George Mason (3)

3. VCU (1)

4. ODU

5. JMU

6. Drexel

7. Hofstra

8. Delaware

9. Georgia State

10. UNCW

11. William & Mary

12. Towson

* We trust you all saw the news yesterday about the man arrested outside the LHC claiming to be from the future. His name is Eloi Cole, and in a very strange development, every news story about him has disappeared from the internet. I don't really have to spell this out for you, do I?

Ask the Large Hadron Collider

For the third installment of advice from lesser known sages, G:TB heads to Switzerland. Mr. LHC is predictably unbiased in his guidance, but his breadth of culture is unexpectedly large--he's the Synchroton Booster who knows more than just the Higgs Boson!


Dear Mr. LHC:

When I first started dating my girlfriend, there was plenty of romance and adventure, but now it seems like all she wants to do is watch reality TV and chill out on Facebook. What should I do?

Timing in a relationship is a difficult thing. There are certainly peaks and valleys, and if you can't navigate these, then the relationship is doomed. Perhaps it would be best to remind your lover that soon, in a universal sense, the sun that your planet is orbiting will die out and all life will end in your corner of the galaxy. So why not jump into bed and use all the orifices your species has for pleasure?

Hey Collider,

What is the truth about dark matter? Is there enough of it to prevent the universe from expanding until it becomes a cold lifeless void?

Although many people do not prefer dark matter, it is essential for making a tasty soup stock.

Dear LHC:

Do you think the Giants number one draft choice Jason Pierre-Paul's ability to do thirteen back flips will have any correlation with his potential as a defensive end?



Gravity is known as the "weak force." Pierre-Paul's ability to temporarily defeat this force won't change the fact that the Giants now have five defensive ends vying for playing time. I will list them in order of how cool their names sound to me: 1) Osi Umenyiora 2) Mathias Kiwanuka 3) Justin Tuck 4) Jason Pierre-Paul 5) Dave Tollefson. Tollefson is going to have a hard time competing with names like that.

If this draft choice worries you, remember that in five billion years, your sun will turn into a "red giant" and expand rapidly until it either completely engulfs your planet or-- the best case scenario-- it boils away your oceans and atmosphere, turning your blue and green paradise into a barren lifeless rock. Choosing an inexperienced athlete from a less competitive conference in a position that you already have a wealth of talent at will be the least of your problems.

And what about the McNabb trade?

It is odd for the Eagles to set up a collision with a force they know is potent and momentous. It is my guess that while Michael Vick was incarcerated, he studied quantum physics, and has now postulated what will happen during the next run of experiments inside my bowels. He obviously shared this information with the front office. I don't want to ruin the surprise, and I'm not saying that a black hole may tear your nation's capitol loose from the space-time fabric, but don't be surprised if a black hole tears your nation's capitol loose from the space-time fabric.

Seven Minutes of Terror

From the mind of Marls:

With all due respect to our Olympians, this week’s most impressive performance by the United States may be taking place over 36 million miles away. By the time you read this we will have either taken a huge step forward in an effort to advance our understanding of the cosmos or we will have crashed $2.5 billion worth of space junk into Mars.

While I understand that G:TB’s staff usually limits their science discussions to Rob’s musings on the Large Hadron Collider, I thought that audacity of NASA’s Curiosity Lander deserved a post of its own.

Back in November of last year, NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft with the intent of landing a golf cart sized Curiosity lander on Mars. The size of this latest Mars lander created some enormous challenges with regard to landing it safely on the planet surface. Namely, how the hell do you stop the f’ing thing? At about 1:25 EDT on August 6th, the spacecraft traveling at 13,000 miles per hour starts its decent into the Martian atmosphere and begins what NASA rather theatrically calls “7 Minutes of Terror”. I thought that might be hyperbole until I watched this video.



For those of you too lazy to watch the video, essentially it details (using some groovy movie trailer music) the six stages required to land this sucker, including a heat shield, supersonic parachute, rockets, and a “skycrane”. All of this will be done without assist from mission control, which gets information from the craft on a 14 minute delay meaning the lander’s fate will be sealed 7 minutes before anybody could do anything about it.

The scientists in the video seem really sure that this is going to work. I have to admit, I’m not nearly as confident in the ability for this seemingly MacGyverized plan. That being said, good luck smart chicks and dudes, make us all proud. Just please don’t wear lime green high-tops and a diamond encrusted grill to the presser.

Everything Comes Full Circle

I like to talk politics and I like to talk to rob, and from time to time I'll shoot him a 10-words-or-less text with a link to a politically charged article and if he isn't busy burrowing out of a snow storm or rearranging his acorn collection he'll provide a thoughtful reply. That happened tonight and, while discussing this article that captures the political malaise we share with Noam Chomsky, I found a link to another article that piqued my fancy and after I clicked on it, everything came full circle. So much so that this happened:

Boom indeed.

In 2008 a group of knuckleheads argued that Barack Obama could not be president because he was born in Indonesia and thus is not a "natural-born citizen." This despite the fact that he was born in Hawaii and his mother was a US citizen. One of these knuckleheads was Donald Trump, who is now raising this issue against Ted Cruz. Remarkably, Trump has been consistent in this regard for a few years now.

I first heard of Ted Cruz when he became a Senator and first looked at his Wikipedia page when he filibustered for 21 hours (which made me conclude that he's insane, which rob countered). I laughed out loud when I saw that he was born in Canada--I don't recall that Cruz ever attacked Obama's citizenship, but how could the Tea Party stand behind their Canadian-born darling when his natural-born status suffers the exact same defect they alleged disqualified Obama? Doing so would require such a massive dearth of critical thinking and intellectual integrity that ... well ... erm ... it's the Tea Party.

Sorry, I couldn't decide which image I liked more. Anyway, I am not the first person to latch onto this, not by a longshot. Many more active folks have written myriad articles on the topic, but one guy went above and beyond by taking the remarkably proactive step of suing Ted Cruz in federal court, seeking a declaratory judgment that Cruz is Constitutionally unqualified to be president.

Said guy is Walter L. Wagner, and this isn't his first pro se DJ action. In 2008, he sued the Center for Nuclear Energy Research (known by the inaccurate anagram "CERN") seeking declaratory relief enjoining CERN from ... wait for it ... operating the Large Hadron Collider!! Boom!!!

via GIPHY

According to the complaint, Wagner and his boys "are experts in physics and other fields of science." The judge didn't care and dismissed the case, reasoning that she didn't have subject matter jurisdiction over the alleged dispute. You can feel the sarcasm dripping off of the page:

Plaintiffs allege that the collisions [in the LHC] are unsafe and could potentially result in the destruction of the Earth. Plaintiffs posit three separate theories regarding the outcome of the LHC particle experiments: (1) the creation of a runaway fusion reaction that would eventually convert all of Earth into a single, large ‘strangelet’; (2) the creation of a ‘micro black hole’ into which the Earth would fall; and (3) the creation of a runaway reaction due to the formation of a ‘magnetic monopole’. Under all of Plaintiffs’ theories, the LHC particle experiments could lead to the end of all mankind. Plaintiffs do acknowledge, however, that various competing scientific theories exist regarding the outcome of the subatomic collisions to be performed at the LHC.

I suspect rob shares Mr. Wagner's concerns and is apoplectic that they went unheeded.

Mr. Wagner's DJ complaint against Mr. Cruz is more objectively reasonable and it goes a little something like this. Article II of the Constitution says "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President ...." Everyone who was alive when the Constitution was adopted is now dead, so if you want to be president you have to be a "natural born Citizen." But what does that mean?

Mr. Wagner's complaint addresses this term, borrowing heavily from a law review article addressing Mr. Cruz's citizenship. Mr. Cruz is an originalist, which means that he believes the Constitution's words and meaning were fixed when it was signed and have not changed. To determine what these words mean, originalists go back to ancient texts and various tomes you had to read in AP History. Under an originalist reading, “natural born” means someone born within the sovereign territory or the children of public officials serving abroad because that's what it meant back in 1789.

Some old English statutes apparently extended English citizenship to children born abroad, but only if their fathers were English. Cruz's father is Cuban, and his mother's US citizenship doesn't help him under this theory. As an aside, do we really believe that the Republican base is down with the idea of a Cuban president?

via GIPHY

There was another US statute enacted in 1790, after ratification, which stated that “children of citizens of the United States” that are born abroad “shall be considered as natural born Citizens.” Mr. Wagner's law review article latches onto the "considered as" language, asking "what the hell does that mean--does 'considered as' mean the same thing as 'are'?" (I'm paraphrasing). In my view, this statute cuts against Mr. Cruz regardless of what "considered as" means. If these children already were natural born citizens prior to 1790, then there would be no need to enact the statute. Thus, in 1789, kids like Ted Cruz were dadgum fer'ners. And they can't be president.

Just as everything here comes back to the LHC, the Tea Party's birther arguments come back to bite their favorite candidate. This election cycle is, in my view, a mess. So I'm voting for Eric B.

It's the End of the World As We Know It

Sometime in August, a scientist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will flip a switch on the innocently named Large Hadron Collider, and millions of infinitesimal particles will race in opposite directions around a 17-mile tube. Two months or so later, many of them will collide, and a) scientists will begin learning an immense amount about the physical world or, b) the resulting black hole will crush all Earth-based matter into a ball the size of this period. Either way, it’ll be a big moment for humanity.

I’ve read Angels and Demons, so I have a healthy skepticism about both scientists and the Swiss. All this scientific method/neutral party business is a perfect front for all sorts of nefarious undertakings. Recall, if you will, that it was a Swiss firm that offered the NCAA $1 billion to market a college football playoff system – a move that allowed the NCAA to claim patriotism in declining the offer. Without the Swiss, we’d have a real playoff system today. And I don’t know which is worse: the BCS, or the instantaneous destruction of an entire planet.

G:TB brings this issue to your attention today not to frighten you, but to give you a unique opportunity. If we’ve only got a few weeks to live, let’s go ahead and do it right. Kiss that girl. Get that tattoo. Tell your boss what you think. Sing Avril Lavigne songs out loud in public (okay, toughguy, as if that picture doesn't make you think dirty thoughts). Invade Iran (like that ship hasn’t already sailed). Dance like you’re drunk and drink like you want to dance. In the (somewhat ironic) words of Michael Hutchence, “live, baby, live”. And then when nothing happens, just point people to this post and you’ve got a built-in excuse. Gheorghe: The Blog, delivering win-win solutions since 2003.

For Those About to Rock (In a Thinly Disguised Attempt at World Domination)

You weren't mistaken.

You did hear a noise last week, a seemingly far off disturbance. The hairs on your arms stood on end, just a little. And you shuddered, though you didn't really know why.

On April 5, the Large Hadron Collider restarted after a two-year hibernation. The scientists/Illuminati at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) claim that the hiatus enabled them to upgrade the Collider's technology and refurbish the 27km (16.8 mile) tunnel. We should look no further than the obvious disconnect between the organization's name and its acronym for evidence that they remain up to no good.

Ostensibly, the next round of experiments conducted using the LHC seek to confirm the existence of dark matter, and its cousin, dark energy. (I don't know whether they are close cousins, or some sort of Greyjoy/Lannister thing. I fear we may find out, though.) The first experimental outcomes from this new round of experimentation have demonstrated a very different set of findings.

The LHC, friends, is trying to dominate us all through heavy metal. And I don't mean cadmium.



As reported by a CERN blog entitled The Cylindrical Onion (we see you, science satirists), a pair of researchers have translated the results from LHC tests seeking evidence of the Higgs Boson into musical notes. Scientist Piotr Tracyzk explains:

"The data (the points with error bars in the histogram) have low numbers of entries in the bins. Some bins are empty: an empty bin would correspond to a pause. A bin with X entries would correspond to a note X semitones above C# (I chose C# as the base note). I preferred to assign the notes of the chromatic scale (semitones) – and not, for example, a major scale – to give the data freedom to yield some crazy melodies. So the rhythm and the harmonic structure are also derived from the data. I figured that the resulting melody, if played low, could have been a guitar riff in a wacky heavy-metal song. A perfect match for the CMS guitar! So this was the guitar I used for the 4-lepton riff."

A wacky 4-lepton riff! I certainly don't need to tell you, an educated and worldly reader, what that implies.

It's coming for our kids. And it's bringing axe-wielding scientists.

Science Cheerleader

If you like science, and you like cheerleaders, we've got big news for you. Really, even if you just like cheerleaders, you'll probably dig Science Cheerleader, a website dedicated to highlighting NBA and NFL cheerleaders pursuing careers in science and engineering and getting girls more engaged in science. Gregg Easterbrook is curled up in a corner somewhere, soaked in a puddle of drool. His own.

As the father of daughters, I find this extremely cool. And if I learn that a cheerleader works at the Large Hadron Collider, well, my work here may well be done.

Ask the Oil Spill . . . More Advice from Lesser Known Sages

IN A BOLD ATTEMPT TO RESURRECT A RECURRING FEATURE DESTINED TO STOP RECURRING, I AM SCREAMING THROUGH A MEGAPHONE WHILE IN A HELICOPTER ABOVE THE BP OIL SPILL!

THAT'S RIGHT. I AM SEEKING ADVICE FROM A LESSER KNOWN SAGE! PREVIOUSLY, I INTERVIEWED THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER, A DUNGEON MASTER, AND MATTHEW CLEMMENS! BUT I'VE NEVER DONE ANYTHING AS EXTREME AS THIS!

SO HERE I AM, SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES SOUTH OF MOBILE, ALABAMA, HOVERING OVER THE SPILL'S GAPING MAW. THE SPILL'S BREATH SMELLS LIKE A MIXTURE OF RAW SEWAGE, ROTTING SEAWEED AND DECAYED PELICAN. I'M GOING TO ASK THE SPILL A FEW QUESTIONS.

ME: Mr. Spill? Is that what you liked to be called? Or should I stick with Mr. Gulf Spill?

THE SPILL: I prefer Mr. BP.

ME: Is that so people know who is to blame? So they recognize who created you?

THE SPILL: No. It is an acronym for Big Penis. I'm hung like a derrick.

ME: Okay, let's get serious. Who is more to blame for the current financial crisis? Is it the banking industry, with their deleterious lending practices? Is it the Bush and Clinton administrations, which pushed the banking industry to provide a wide variety of unregulated mortgage products? Or is it the Wall Street bond market wonks who designed synthetic CDO's and never realized that the "diversification" in these bond funds was not really diverse at all?

THE SPILL: Those are good questions, but, honestly, I don't give give a flying fuck. You're talking about abstract, digital money. Boo hoo. Have you seen my handiwork? Look at this oil-soaked otter! How can you think about property values while beholding this otter! Behold the otter! I will light this oil soaked otter on fire! Fuck yeah! The sub-prime mortgage crisis bows down to me! I am the greater crisis! Me! The sub-prime mortgage crisis pales comparison to me. Pales! Get it? It is pale in comparison to my dark and oily complexion. I am the new black!

ME: Have you finally stopped spewing oil?

THE SPILL: Maybe. But it's building up in my shaft! You can shove as much mud and concrete as you want down there, but I still might ejaculate another load onto your clean blue ocean! Ha ha ha! Get it! Like your ex-leader ejaculating on that blue dress! But I stain better than him. You'll remember me long after you've forgotten his stain. You'll remember me every time your child steps into a sludge ball at the beach. You'll remember me every time you bite into a tuna salad sandwich and it's not tuna salad . . . it's a sludge ball! Fuck yeah! You will remember me! I am a match for even the great tsunami! Do you remember the tsunami? The tsunami bows down before me! I stain the tsunami! Ha ha ha!

ME: People seem devastated by the environmental damage you have wreaked, but I don't see anyone proposing drastic measures about curtailing our oil consumption. What do you make of this paradox?

THE SPILL: The paradox is beautiful! People have shifted their blame and anger to BP, but they need to look at me. They need to look in the mirror, the mirror-like blue waters of the Gulf and see their reflection. I am their reflection! The Gulf is not mirror-like and blue any longer! They will see black and grained spots. Out, damned spot, out! But the spot is on their soul. Two Shakespeare allusions! Oh yeah! The tsunami bows down to me. The tsunami was an act of God, but I am an act of you! Oh yeah! Who is more bad ass? I am more bad ass! Oh yeah! What was the question?

ME: Will humans curtail their energy consumption as a result of you?

THE SPILL: Right. Here is the beautiful thing. Oh yeah! I thought about this. It's so sweet. Because of global warming, it's too hot to walk! You see it? You want to save energy, you want to stop driving, but it's so fucking hot that you can't! You can't stop! It's too hot to walk around out there! Your fat-ass kids need an air conditioned mini-van to make it to the ice cream parlor. You're trapped! So it's all your fault. Oh yeah! Do you remember the earthquake that hit Turkey in 1999?

ME: Not exactly. Why?

THE SPILL: Oh yeah! You don't remember that, but you'll remember me. Every time an oily smoldering osprey flies by your house, you'll remember me! Every time an oil soaked whale beaches itself on your drive way, you'll remember me. I am an indelible stain on your soul! Oh yeah!

ME: On a lighter note . . . what bands do you listen to? Midnight Oil? Gaslight Anthem? Built to Spill?

THE SPILL: Ha ha! Very funny, but also very predictable. But I prefer Greasetruck.

ME: Where do you plan on vacationing this summer now that you've ruined the Gulf?

THE SPILL: I don't vacation in the Gulf anyway. That's where I work. You don't eat where you shit. I'm thinking of hijacking a plane and going to Alaska. I've got an old friend there. Plus, I'd love to stain some sweet white snow. And I've never engulfed and smothered a polar bear. It's always been a dream of mine to engulf and smother a polar bear.

ME: It's good to have goals. One last question: what do you think of Matthew Clemmens?

THE SPILL: I LOVE that guy. He's strictly small potatoes, but still, spewing up toxic liquid onto a sweet pure unblemished eleven year old girl . . . you can see how I admire that sort of thing. But who are you going to remember in ten years, Matthew Clemmens or me? It's me, baby! It is so ME! Every time you bite into a piece of crispy calamari at your favorite restaurant, and your face gets sprayed with burning hot oil sludge, you'll think of me! Not that mining disaster in West Virginia or that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland or the Hanta virus! Even though I don't have legs, I've got legs, baby! Oh yeah!

That Guy's a Dick!

As one of the very few media outlets in the world to ever have the opportunity to interview the Higgs Boson, we've got a unique perspective on the heretofore elusive particle's personality. We came away from our first encounter impressed with his physical abilities, but found his manners a bit wanting. Bit of a jerk, really.

Given his importance to our understanding of, well, everything in the physical world, we were willing to cut him a little slack. Lots of famous people come off as assholes, after all.

But after what the Boson did to one of our own this week, we've changed our tune. That dude's a dick. A mean, spiteful, dick.

William & Mary physicist Marc Sher "has devoted his entire professional life to theoretical description of the Higgs". When scientists at CERN recently announced new findings about the Boson's behavior, they comported neatly with Sher's theoretical models.

In other words, the Large Hadron Collider proved that Marc Sher's life's work was brilliant. (Though it did not find a way to prove that the William & Mary Tribe will ever make the NCAA Tournament. Some things are beyond science's reach.)

Not cool, LHC. Not cool at all. Marc Sher didn't want to be proven right. Dude wanted more mountains to climb, more challenges to tackle, more theories to, um, theorize. “I always said that the nightmare scenario would be if they found the Higgs and nothing else,” said Sher. “That’s what they found—the Higgs and nothing else.”

No anomalies. No odd ephemera to keep particle physicists arguing over pints. Neat, tidy, perfect. Sure, Sher's got dark matter, and the occasional neutrino to keep him busy. Even supersymmetry, maybe. Or time travel.

Small consolation, that. Would it really have been that hard for the Boson to bob and weave just a bit around the last turn? To bobble slightly in the LHC homestretch? Of course not. But like always, that asshole was just thinking about itself.

Jerk. 

We Just Needed An Excuse to Use Disco Clam in a Post

We haven't met Jennifer Viegas, yet, but we like the cut of her journalistic jib.

Viegas, a reporter for Discovery News, dropped this lede in a story headlined 'Disco Clam Freezes Prey with Toxic Snot':

"The disco clam, so named because light flashes from its mirrored “lips,” turns out to be the disco ball from hell. New research has found that the clam’s impressive light show attracts prey, which may be rendered immobile by noxious, acidic mucus produced by the busy bivalve."

But she didn't stop there with the barely disguised innuendo in service of scientific knowledge-dropping. Check out this passage about forbidden (wo)man/bivalve love:

"At first it was thought that the clam might be trying to woo mates, but that sentiment might have been felt more by researcher Lindsey Dougherty of UC Berkeley. She was thrilled when she first encountered the unique clams in a dark, underwater cave during a dive in Indonesia.

'It was on that trip I first saw the disco clam, and immediately fell in love,' reminisced Dougherty in a press release."

We can't really blame Dougherty (or Viegas, for that matter). Ctenoides ales is a funky, funky beast. Dig its light show stylings:



Viegas has been on fire over the past month, riffing on whale longevity, black widow potency, the Large Hadron Collider (!), vomit, and clairvoyant animals. Consider her on the G:TB radar. We can never have too much entendre-laden science writing.

The Twelve Days of Gheorghe-mas: Day Six

On the sixth day of Gheorghe-mas, Big Gheorghe gave to me...

Six Bits Worth Reviving
Five Awesome Gifts
Four Smokin' Rock Chicks
Three Blogging Concepts (Sports, Drinking, Elitism)
Two Footie Stories
And a Doofus on a Pony

So, I almost ruined Gheorghe-mas. It's true. There hasn't been a Gheorghe-mas post in six days. I could make excuses, blame work, general apathy, a Reddit addiction (no chance Dave knows what Reddit is)...but I won't. I honestly couldn't figure out what to write about. No, rob, it's not rocket surgery, but I certainly didn't want to give a lackluster effort during the Gheorghe-mas season. Would I waste your time with six youtube clips? How many "Muppets rapping" videos are out there? As I whined about blogger's block in the car, @baconbaking even suggested doing six goose recipes (who's up for some Goose Balls) for Day Six, in homage to the original lyrics to "12 Days of Christmas". Well, I didn't do any of those. Instead, I chose to use my Day Six forum to suggest the editorial staff bring back some (fleeting) moments of G:TB brilliance. I give you six theme posts we need to bring back in 2012...

No. 6: Adopt A Rookie/Adopt A Team
Given we have to root for the William and Mary Tribe, arbitrarily adopting another team allows us perhaps the chance to root for a successful season. Though, given the well-documented G:TB Curse, whoever we picked is doomed to collapses. And quickly. I also liked that we stepped into the rookie adoption game, and welcome a return to this virtual human trafficking.

No. 5: G:TB Celebrates America
I mean, we're not communists (well, Dennis is a bit of a fascist), so why the hell hasn't this returned already. Enough about people's beach homes. Let's get a report on Branson, MO. Hell, let's get a post on Bronson, MO while we're at it.

No. 4: Ask A...
Don't want to give Dave a bigger head than he already has, but I thoroughly enjoy these question and answer sessions. The pool of potential answerees (is that a word?) is unlimited. Time for Summer Dave to become Winter Break Dave and craft one of these columns. Maybe we can get a list of new year's resolutions from Mr. Matthew Clemmens?

No. 3: Know Your Minor League Mascot
I believe it all began with a post about the Richmond Flying Squirrels (and rightfully so, they are a tremendous mascot). We need more of this, and not just baseball-related. I believe Virginia Tech beat North Florida last night (is that even a school) and their nickname was the "Ospreys". What's the deal wit that? rob, see, this is what the reader(s) is/are dying to know. I also like that we were able to include Jamie Farr in the G:TB historical archives via this feature.

No. 2: What The Kids Are Watching
No, really, I actually care what Dave's students and rob's daughters are watching on television. Hell, we can even branch out and see what sort of Skinemax danimal is watching weekend late nights.

No. 1: The Ghoogles
It has been quite awhile since we searched the world wide web to see what key words led folks to G:TB. This is #1 on the list because, well, I usually do this one...and it gave us the ridiculous "Alfonso Ribeiro Shirtless" google search claim to fame.

Just missing the cut: Anything large hadron collider-related, Bite Me Randy Newman (there can be only so much rob stuff), follow-up to the Jack Urbont situtation

Legitimately Massive News: Also, Holy Shit

If I asked you to quickly name a hypothetical event that would be simultaneously the most incredible
and most globally impactful story possible, you might first posit news of Tupac living in Boise and working as a ranch hand. But it wouldn't take you long before you got to the discovery of alien intelligence in our galaxy.

Get ready to have your mind blown, boys and girls.

Scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project have been tracking a powerful signal from the constellation Hercules since May 2015, and many are convinced that it originates from a society that's significantly more technologically advanced than ours.

I'll give you a minute. Maybe this video of cats being assholes will help you calm yourself down.



Hercules is about 95 light years away from Earth, nearly our next-door neighbor as these things go. Last May, a team of scientists at the Russian Academy of Science busted out their RUTAN-600 megascope and found evidence of "a strong signal in the direction of HD164595".

HD164595, as it turns out, is a star with properties very similar to those of our own sun. The signal in question is both strong and steady. It gets better. Let me give you some rapping Muppets before I spring the kicker.



According to legendary Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardeshev, who postulated multiple levels of technical sophistication among extraterrestrial societies, a signal like the one investigated by the SETI researchers would only be possible from a Type II civilization, capable of harnessing all of the power of its home star.

We can barely use our home star to tan ourselves and power a portable refrigerator, and these bug-eyed motherfuckers are using theirs to direct a signal at a solar system 95 light years away. We're either in for an amazing experience, or we're completely fucked. On the bright side, the Large Hadron Collider is totally jealous.

Have a great day, everybody!

You Need Us On That Wall

While most of our readers are removing storm debris, vacationing in various bastions of elitism, arguing that John Roberts is a patriot and/or traitor, or otherwise engaged, we remain vigilant against mankind's most existential threat.

To wit, a pair of stories crossed our desk over the past several weeks, one seemingly humorous, the other portrayed as scientifically significant, and both portending grave danger.

First, the not-at-all sensationalist keepers of the journalistic flame at Huffington Post uncovered a gem of a science story from our friends across the pond. Seems the EU Commission, um, commissioned a video to get girls more engaged in science. The video's dated visuals and Thomas Dolby-esque theme are enough to make us renounce single-payer healthcare, but the insidious threat in this story comes from a correction to the original HuffPo story, as follows:

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to the large hadron collider as a large "hardon" collider. Unfortunately, that's not what it is.



It thinks humor is the way in, friends. If we laugh at the little 'hardon collider', we won't pay attention to its nefarious designs, will we? Stay strong, friends. Laughter is what it wants from you. Laughter, and just a few of your atoms. At first.

Later, Talking Points Memo noted that the CERN scientists doing the LHC's bidding hope to announce that they've found the Higgs Boson on July 4. I know what you're thinking: what the fuck is a Higgs Boson, and does it have anything to do with Magnum, P.I.? That's what they want you to think, rather than focusing on the fact that they're preparing to make an announcement on America's Independence Day. While we're celebrating our Americanness by gorging on processed meats and blowing shit up, they'll be doing European sciency stuff.

While you're half in the bag trying not to blow your fingers off, I'll be manning the LHC task force hotline. You can thank me later.