Will The World End Wednesday?
Is this my last weekend ever?
I don't really believe I'm about to disappear down Cern's black hole.
But ... what if?

by Leo Hickman
guardian.co.uk, Sunday September 07 2008 13:00 BST

So, this is it then. This could be our very last weekend. For all of us. Next Wednesday, we will all disappear down a black hole. Humanity will cease. The Earth will cease. The solar system will cease. Well, not in its current form or dimension, anyway.

Even though the atom-smashing physicists at the CERN mega-laboratory in Switzerland who are preparing to crank up the most audacious and expensive experiment in history insist that the chances of anything going wrong are "infinitesimally small", there is still a small band of doubters out there who fear the worst . But despite their best efforts – which include two failed legal challenges - to avert what they believe will be a galactic catastrophe triggered by the experiment, the big lever will nonetheless be pulled on Wednesday and the atom smashing will commence.

For people such as me, who struggled to understand the back cover of A Brief History of Time and therefore don't know my Higgs bosons from my gluons, it's time to take a giant leap of faith. We have to accept that this expert band of physicists gathered from around the world know exactly what they are doing. I'm extremely confident they do – they've double, triple checked their calculations, right? – but there's still a teeny part of me that wonders, what if?

If the thought of the Large Hadron Collider being fired up on Wednesday for the first time leaves you, albeit irrationally, a tad unsettled, too, then wonder what it will be like for those real doubters over the next few days. What do you do when you have a firm appointment in your diary that simply says "End of World"?

Personally, I think I would have a to-do list prepared. Dave Freeman, the co-author of the best-selling "100 Things to Do Before You Die", recently died aged 47 following a fall at his home in California. But, despite his early death, he had already completed half of the things on his list, including running with the bulls in Pamplona. He was the definitive "man with a plan". I like that attitude.

But there would be little point in putting too many fanciful things on your list, such as "skydiving from 15,000ft" or "swimming with dolphins". Let's just run through some of the things that would happen if a date was announced for the end of the world, say, because an asteroid was heading our way and couldn't be stopped, even by a select group of Hollywood action heroes. All systems and services would surely fail within a matter of hours. After all, who's going to bother going to work upon being told such dramatic news, especially if it's imminent?

I'm torn between thinking that we would all run around screaming and looting, or simply be becalmed by the news and enter into a collective group hug. If history has taught us anything, it would suggest that the former is far more likely, but then again what's the point of smashing the windows of an electronics store and stealing a 42" plasma screen television, if you have just a few days left? Is watching reruns of Only Fools and Horses, or playing Mario Kart Wii (10), really the best use of your time? Most of us, once realising the game was up, would probably retreat to our homes and do things such as flick through our photo albums, listen to favourite albums, and comfort eat our way through whatever food was available. After all, who's going to be worrying about calories?

In fact, just think of those other fleeting benefits – no worrying about a recession, no worrying about climate change, and no worrying about coming up with a witty Facebook status update every few hours. And think, too, of all those things we'd never know the answer to: would Obama have defeated McCain? Which cabinet member started the revolt against Gordon Brown? Where was Bin Laden hiding? Would Liverpool have ever won the Premiership? Who would have won Big Brother? (Actually, I'm prepared to be vaporised without knowing the answer to this one, but it does raise an intriguing issue: should we tell the people in the Big Brother house about the bad news, or leave them in blissful ignorance?)

And then there's the ultimate unanswered question: does God exist? How would religion fit into this end-of-the-world scenario? (Presumably, the Rapturists would be thrilled?) Would people flock to their nearest church, mosque, synagogue or temple seeking salvation? Or would people feel abandoned by their god(s)?

But I feel there's a more compelling question: what do you do when you wake up bleary eyed on Thursday and everything is still there? The world has survived, after all. What have all those people in the past done when their end-of-the-world predictions haven't, in fact, proved to be true? Are they pleased, depressed, or do they just feel a little bit silly? I've been asked on a number of occasions how I would feel if climate change, for example, was proved somehow to be false. Bloody relieved is the honest answer. But, as with what's about to take place at CERN, I trust that the thousands of scientists involved have reached a sensible conclusion about the likely threat to humanity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/07/cern.physics

Is Congress An [Illegal] "GANG" Under S.155?

[Note: This article is from Friday, June 23, 2006 and may be indicative of, "Be careful what you wish/vote for."]

Sigmund Freud famously asked, "What does woman want?" He also famously asserted that "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Downsize DC not-so-famously asks, "Is Congress a gang, and does it need to be abated?"

And we not-so-assertively assert that "Sometimes Congress could be a gang, depending on the future use and misuse made of Senate bill 155 -- the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act." And so could your motorcycle club, your chess club, your rose growing league, and potentially any association under the sun, including Downsize DC.

It all depends on what the meaning of is, is. Sigmund Freud's use of the word "sometimes" would seem to suggest that sometimes he thought a cigar was not just a cigar (Bill Clinton probably agrees), and Congress's historical relationship to the Constitutional words "Congress shall make no law," would seem to suggest that sometimes a club, or association, could also be a gang.

The definition of "gang" could depend on the answer to the question, "What does Congress want?" Congress clearly wants to have a "living Constitution" that can have any meaning at any time, with no actual words ever being changed. And they may also want a "living S. 155" so that any group could be labeled a gang, if the Feds felt a need to abate or prevent that group.

S. 155 is the brainchild of Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of California. This bill has many different versions, under many different names. It seems to mutate faster than the HIV virus. It also, like most Congressional bills, shows a tendency toward promiscuity. It could be joined with another bill, with a different subject, at any time. And a major disease could result.

S. 155 would make it a crime to belong to a group, or to recruit members to that group, as long as that group is called a gang. S. 155 would also do all sorts of other things, many of which are unknown to us because the bill is long, and we haven't had time to read it yet. WE ONLY JUST LEARNED ABOUT THIS BILL FROM SECRET INFORMERS LAST NIGHT! But remember, Congress won't read S. 155 either, before they attach it to "The Sweetness and Light and Everything Good Act" in the dead of night, and rush it to a vote.

Indeed, the gang known as the Senate Judiciary Committee is having a secret conspiratorial meeting (otherwise known as an executive session) right now, to consider S. 155. And rumor has it that they may join S. 155 to some kind of "we hate sex offenders" bill that no one will dare to vote against. There are so many things wrong with all of this ...

• Neither gang abatement nor sex offenses are the business of the federal government.
• Criminal law is a state function, under our Constitution, not a federal function.
• The Judiciary Committee should not meet in secret.
• Bills should not be attached to other bills.
• Bills should be available to the public for at least a week before a vote is held.
• Laws should not engage in prior restraint, or criminalize free association.
• Laws should not be vague, leaving the concrete details to bureaucratic discretion.

But there's more. S. 155 has all the makings of another RICO Act. RICO is the law that, among other things, allows the government to charge your property with a crime, and seize it under a civil procedure with lax standards of evidence. Do we really need another RICO Act?

In the movie "Little Caesar," the gang leader Rico, played by Edward G. Robinson, is shot down. As he lays dying he asks the great existential question, "Is this the end of Rico?" The answer is yes. Rico dies. The RICO Act, and all its clones, like S. 155, should suffer the same fate. Congress should not deal with lawless gangs by becoming a lawless gang. But that's exactly what they're doing. And the time is short to thwart this criminal conspiracy ...

We don't have time to mount one of our standard Electronic Advocacy campaigns. Phone calls are needed. Make the Senate Judiciary Gang nervous. If you see one of your Senators on the Gang Roster below, call them and tell them to oppose S. 155 and all its variants. If your Senator is not on this list then call the Senate Judiciary Gang Leader, Arlen Specter, and tell him to stop S. 155.

Please do so now. It will be fun, and it will only take a minute. Here's the list of gang members ...

Arlen Specter - CHAIRMAN, PENNSYLVANIA - 202-224-4254
Orrin G. Hatch - UTAH - 202-224-5251
Patrick J. Leahy - VERMONT - 202-224-4242
Charles E. Grassley - IOWA - 202-224-3744
Edward M. Kennedy - MASSACHUSETTS - 202-224-4543
Jon Kyl - ARIZONA - 202-224-4521
Joseph R. Biden, Jr. - DELAWARE - 202-224-5042
Mike DeWine - OHIO - 202-224-2315
Herbert Kohl - WISCONSIN - 202-224-5653
Jeff Sessions - ALABAMA - 202-224-4124
Dianne Feinstein - CALIFORNIA - 202-224-3841
Lindsey Graham - SOUTH CAROLINA - 202-224-5972
Russell D. Feingold - WISCONSIN - 202-224-5323
John Cornyn - TEXAS - 202-224-2934
Charles E. Schumer - NEW YORK - 202-224-6542
Sam Brownback - KANSAS - 202-224-6521
Richard J. Durbin - ILLINOIS - 202-224-2152
Tom Coburn - OKLAHOMA - 202-224-5754

Source: http://www.freemarketnews.com/Analysis/64/5430/2006-06-23.asp?wid=64&nid=5430

Addendum: All information related to S.155 is located here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.00155:

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September 2008
by Karl Cohen

Nina with the Oscar winning stop-motion animator Barry Purvis

NINA PALEY WON A SECOND HONOR AT ANNECY Not only did she win the festival's grand prize (known as the Crystal) for best animated feature, she and Johannes Walters of Germany came in third in the 8th running of the Nik and Nancy Phelps Annual Paddle Boat Race. (Not yet an official Olympic event.) The photo was taken after they crossed the finish line.

Nancy tells me the annual race and picnic came about because, "Not much ever happens on Saturday in Annecy. Everyone is waiting for the awards ceremony. We had a lot of the major contenders at the party this year. The young Croatian who won peddled his legs off. We started this event several years ago (7 or 8 at least) so that after a very high-powered week we could all relax and just have fun. We definitely consume a lot of alcoholic beverages. That makes the race pretty funny." - [Continue Reading]

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