CERN scientists ‘break the speed of light’ — The Telegraph.
The brief article to which the above link leads may turn out to detail one of the signal moments in science in this young century, if not indeed the millennium. Or it could turn out to be an issue with a wonky stopwatch. I’m hoping for the former. Visions of hyperspace are now dancing merrily through my mind. I know that this is far from confirmed, and much work must yet be done to attempt to duplicate the experiment, yet I cannot help but be a bit excited. Or perhaps more than a bit. Things are so much more interesting when we don’t know as much as we think we know.
At long last, your scribe, after an extended absence from the pages of this electronic memoir, which he would be greatly pleased to attribute to something fascinating and romantic–such as an expedition by airship to chart the legendary lost continent of Atlantis, followed perhaps by a convalescence at a Tuscan villa to recover from months of endless vistas of sea and sky and Professor Arronax leaning out of windows trying to spot the precise bit of water the Nautilus once passed under and periodically shouting “There! Right there! Don’t you see it?”–but the blame for which, in all honesty, can only be laid before his own recalcitrance as a regular correspondent . . . in short, your scribe once again has something to report.
Recently, as the heading of this journal entry might suggest, I attended a Meeting of Some Import. For those who are familiar with my current academic circumstances, the venue of this meeting–the Semitic Museum at Harvard University–will give a fairly strong clue as to the agenda. Indeed, it was a rare opportunity to escape my exile in, as Coleridge described it, this “strange place . . . where Time and weary Space / Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing, / Strive for their last crepuscular half-being.” So it was that, with a sense of boundless optimism matched only by a case of the jitters roughly the size and shape of the RMS Titanic, I set off for the far horizon.
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There’s a discussion currently ongoing over at the Fountain Pen Network, entitled “Ten Things I’ve Done (That You Probably Haven’t).” Apparently it’s an Internet meme or some such thing. Some of the responses were quite interesting, so I figured what the hey, I should participate in an Internet meme at least once in my life. In no particular order, then, here’s my list:
- Deciphered five-thousand-year-old jar sealings dating from the reign of the first king of Egypt (or possibly his predecessor), made when written language was still a new idea.
- Read the Story of Sinuhe in the original hieratic.
- Produced a Master’s thesis, which should have taken most of a year, in three weeks. (And graduated. And impressed the heck out of the committee. AND it wasn’t because I’d procrastinated.)
- Learned the art of bonsai from an American master, in the process working with trees now on display at the Morikami Museum and the National Arboretum.
- Won a university fiction-writing award without entering.
- Nearly perished of hypothermia in July (in the northern hemisphere, south of the Arctic Circle).
- Flew less than twenty feet above the Florida Everglades in a Cessna 172 (as a passenger), startling the heck out of several alligators.
- Aged eleven, gave an impromptu anatomy lesson following the accidental partial vivisection of my arm. My audience was the P.E. instructor, a former Marine, who nearly fainted.
- Learned from, and served as principal demonstration dummy for, a martial arts instructor who some years before had been resoundingly flunked out of high school by my father.
- Met Mr. Rogers. (I was four at the time; I remember little other than that he was every bit as nice as he seemed on TV.)
I should probably elaborate on some of those, but I won’t. I have a comment section. Interested parties may ask.
The first post of the new year features airships! Huzzah!
The new vehicle set to revolutionise the skies — BBC News
I love airships, therefore I love this. I’m absolutely thrilled. I’ve long said that the world needs airships — in a post-fossil world, I envision solar-powered airships taking over from carbon-belching jet airliners. Sure, they wouldn’t be as fast, but how many people really need to zip speedily across the ocean in but a few hours? Bring back a touch of class, of style, of luxury! Return to the future that never was! Bring back the airship!
It occurred to me recently that, though I have frequently spoken of this university and its various denizens (though perhaps not in these electronic pages), I have never provided my friends or family with an accurate picture of the place. So a couple of days ago, I took my camera and toured the campus (or the Collective — a sobriquet with which I honored it after hearing the easily-prompted chanting of the drones, in which one group shouts, “We are,” and all those within earshot are expected to bellow back, “Penn State”). It wasn’t an exhaustive tour. I missed major venues of sight-seeing like the vast tarmac fields of the student parking area and the arena of gladiatorial combat. I also skipped the innards of the food-processing units (I fear the effects of that many fast-food production vats in an enclosed space), and other tourist hot-spots like the Creamery (yes, purchasing ice cream made by students of advanced cow-bothering is a tourist attraction here) and the gift shop.
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