Commentary 
1 Comment Caridad Piniero, an award winning paranormal romance novelist, is donating a portion of her royalties for her new book The Claimed
Commentary, Uncategorized 2 Comments I am avowedly a fan of scientists, similarly to the way I am a fan of major league ballplayers. I understand baseball, and play the game well enough, but the things these MLB players do are so far outside of my experience or ability to be akin to magic.
And I understand science well enough and have a layman’s ability to understand, but what research scientists do is magic. Not akin to magic but out and out fantastic and wondrous stuff.
I was lucky enough to work for the Bell Labs as a public relations hack and get to know some of these guys, and also to grow up with a father who doubled as a Bell Labs physicist. These people are my heroes.
And the search for Higgs-Boson is one of my favorite scientific efforts. I mean, they call it the God particle and are not kidding! But I don’t get it. Really don’t get it. I’m a little to stuck in my observable world and for all my ability to write fiction my imagination just isn’t this good.
Thankfully some of these scientists are not only brilliant thinking but also brilliant explainers, and here we have the explanation for not only what Higgs-Boson might be, but also how they are making the search.
h/t Geeks are Sexy
Commentary, Music, Video Comments Off Mark Sandman was one of the most talented and original songwriters of the 80s and 90s, sadly dying onstage of a heart attack in 1999. His bands Treat Her Right
Here’s an early song from his career called King of Beers which highlights his original lyrical style, rhythm and blues basics and hip singing voice. If you don’t like it, I’ll give you 20 cents credit.
Recommended MP3 albums:
Commentary, humor, Strange, Video Comments Off Soon after a cow escaped sure death in a NJ slaughterhouse to wander the suburban streets, Darcy the Cow escaped her captors in Brush, Colorado to visit some cows that didn’t get so lucky at the local McDonald’s.
No abominations occurred as Darcy was arrested and sent back to the pen.
h/t Neatorama
Commentary, Fiction Comments Off When I was a kid I loved Scooby-Doo
Now that I’m a grownup I love Dr. Who
But there is one large difference, as pointed out in this comic: in Scooby-Doo the fantastic turned out mundane, and in Dr. Who the mundane turns out mysterious.
To me, this perfectly matches what we want at particular ages. As a kid the whole world is mysterious and a little scary, and you’re constantly being challenged to figure new things out. How do those huge, heavy clouds stay in the sky? Why won’t the troll in my closet stop making that creaking noise? What’s the real way to protect myself from cooties? It’s a little scary, but most of the time those fantastic experiences turn out to have perfectly simple explanations and we are able to go about our business. Scooby-Doo and his buddies showed us each week that even the scariest monsters in the world were just pathetic old men who could be taken down by some meddling kids.
As an adult even the mysterious is boring. Thirty years ago a laptop connected to the Internet we could use to watch Dr. Who was miraculous, and now it’s $399 at Target. You can get a 3D printer for your house to make functional tools, something that would have been far fetched in a 1960s television show. Within a couple years cell phones do more than tricorders! We’re surrounded by new, exciting, amazing phantasms and are bored with them. Dr. Who assures us that there is still magic in the world, or at least aliens looking to kill us and steal our brains.
For a kid, you experience a lot of mystery that turns out to be normal -- just like Scooby-Doo's crew. As an adult you wish the mundane would become mysterious -- just like in Dr. Who.