Black Hole Fails to Destruct

 Jonny Arnold, a Doctoral candidate at the California Institute of Technology, re-packages particle minutia into manageable Duplo block chunks. He describes protons like they are Tonka toys, designed to neatly align and click together in your mind. Better yet, he does not patronize his audience with wonky analogies.

Recently, one right-brained intern at a scholarly journal headquartered in Washington set out to understand particles, black holes, the beginning of the world, the end of the world and everything in between, through a series of chatty emails with Mr. Arnold. Little did she know that their correspondence would yield  accessible and particle-sized results. Freed from the stress of feigning comprehension, she absorbed Mr. Arnold’s information, both weighty and non-weighty. Below are the results:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland (CH) (Thank the God Particle for acronyms!) is where it’s at: quite literally.

As of December 15, engineers at CERN have successfully introduced beams of particles into the LHC, they have aligned the beams so the protons collide, and they have pushed the collisions to energies higher than ever before, and as far as anyone can tell, the universe remains intact. Members of the fear media are sorely dissappointed that no life-ending black hole materialized (or de-materialized). As they scramble for reassurance that a black hole is still a terrfiyingly real and  newsworthy threat,  particle physicists the world over are elated.

After all, the goal of the LHC is to create a field where humans can observe the elusive God Particle ( less popularly known as the Higgs boson, a particle that will explain how mass is formed). Each tiny crash in the collider is a piece of our planet’s story that will write itself in data for all to see; and by this measure, the collider is a smashing success.

State of the Dinner

Is it just the news media, or do we all wish we’d crashed the Obama’s state dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Sanini?  That’s their name, right?  You may think this blog is six weeks late, but the lasting power of the Sha-nee-nee’s story is a story in itself , one that couldn’t be broken any earlier:

Americans are jealous!

You betcha! Only deep-seeded resentment could keep a story alive this long.

Envy-evidence can be found all over the news. Instead of processing through our feelings of inadequacy, we demand an investigation. Instead trying to crash Copenhagen, we deliver subpoenas. Instead of accepting the Shaleely’s wily triumph, we bust them for invalid claims of Range Rover sponsorship.

It doesn’t take a PhD. to see that statements like, “I am concerned for the President’s safety!”, really mean, “If I had known it was that easy to get in to the blickin White House, I’d have been there in a DC minute!” (Which is roughly 1.5 minutes according to local EMTs)

Some Obama-manic members of the news media go so far as to misspell the names of the revelers… or refuse to name them at all!

Rest assured, dear reader, the green-eyed monster has yet to invade this blog.

Is There a Third Person in the Room?

Rest your feet awhile in a Barnes and Noble children’s section and grab a listen; you will hear mothers (and a few corrupted fathers) making frequent and unseemly use of the third person.

“Come to mommy!” they instruct.

“Daddy feels frustrated!” they inform.

Just like baby boomers beget blog-writing gen-xers; these millennial moms and dads are adding their stain to the literary drape. With self-defacing solidarity, they are dumping the words “I”, “me” and “my” from every sentence; and in so doing they are training their babes to avoid the third person with post-traumatic attention to detail. You mark mommy’s words: in twenty years, wee Michaela and Max will dump the third person and stick with numbers one and two!

Of course, the possibility of a literary coup is tangential to the psychological ramifications of constant exposure to babble. A child who is repeatedly misdirected to an imaginary third person is likely to be confused and frustrated by her parent’s feeble grasp on reality:

“Look at mommy!” says Cindy Schwartz (35) to poor Shana Schwartz (4) who searches the empty space next to her mother, desperately trying to see “mommy”.

“What does mommy have in her hand?” asks Cindy Pern (32) of dear Bobby Pern (3) who would like to respond, “I have no idea what ‘mommy’ has in her hand, but you have an effin red ball.”

Thankfully, most kids invent coping mechanisms within two minutes of realizing that mom’s lost her mind.

If your child stands two feet to your right and stares into mid-space when you say “come to mommy” it’s because he doesn’t actually know who “mommy” is. His enabling skills have developed far past your ability to identify the subject of a sentence. He thinks you have an imaginary friend and is playing along with the farce.

Go see for yourself! Every Tim, Darth and Larry at the Kinder-Roll accepts that mom has a fantasy sidekick who makes demands and wants him all the time. Dad has a sidekick too, but he only appears when “daddy feels powerless”. Out of pity, Jane allows the “mommy charade” to continue, all the while wondering why dad is so worried about her imaginary friend.

Improper third personage takes its chunk of the blame for failed familial communication. Simple questions like, “What do you want for lunch? Turn into: “Tell mommy what Chrissie wants mommy to make her for lunch”. Mommy should expect no less than a tantrum after a thick inquiry like that!

Or, far, far worse:

“Mommy would really like daddy to bring over a bib. Wouldn’t that be great if daddy would think of someone else for one second and bring over a bib?” To which daddy replies, “Daddy would really like mommy to nag in the first person!” as he walks out the door.

Incidentally, have you ever heard a child refer to himself in the third person? Neither has the author. Case closed.

If Then

If a few future lawyers are irked, some future lawyers are irritated, and many future lawyers are weighing the benefits of aggravated assault, then what can you deduce about most future lawyers?

According to the LSAT prep instructor holding court in the basement of the Hotel Monticello: not a damn thing.

Curiously, all the future lawyers in the room appear conclusively pissed. But that is not an answer choice.

As it turns out, the words “few”, “some”, and “many” mean the same thing: a number between one and infinity. Who knew? (Offhand, you may be able to think a few people who didn’t know, like, say, all the Talmudic scholars you’ve ever met, the editors at The New York Times, and Mr. Webster himself, but la heim!) To complain is futile!

Yet somehow, in every LSAT prep class there are at least two Ivy Leaguers hell-bent on futility. Book-smart and street-silly, these anti-test crusaders insist on challenging every answer choice with a barrage of faux-philosophical, deeply personal questions.

“I am struggling with the word “except”’, whines one Ivy-diva. “Can you graph the linear, paradoxical, and emotional implications of “except” then hold still like a statue until I’m sure I understand?”

Revealing a deep misunderstanding of social cues, she prods long after answers A though D are eliminated; until (at last!) the instructor cedes ground to the possibility that “an answer may not exist in this stratosphere”. 

Meanwhile, her peers are curled in the fetal position on the floor trying to identify the flaw in the following statement:

People who attend Ivy League Universities are more likely to succeed in school. People who do not attend Ivy League Universities are less likely to succeed in school. Therefore, people who attend Ivy League Universities are more likely to succeed.

The LSAT prep instructor, ever-mindful of the type of person who will pursue the money-back guarantee, allows this lady, the bane of his existence, to yap indefinitely while his non-ivy clients finally discover the flaw:

The statement erroneously assumes that “success in school” is a sufficient condition for “success” in life.