Halleluja it's the Higgs

So it may be the long sought Higgs particle observed by CERN and announced officially today. It also might not be and of course this God particle really has nothing at all to do with God or gods of proofs thereof. We owe that idea not to physicists, but to journalists who don't know a Boson from a Bos'n but know anything they can dishonestly and ignorantly claim to be about  scientific proof for any kind of God will attract ratings like mass attracts other mass.

“The whole world thinks there is one Higgs, but there could be many of them.”

said Dr. Joe Incandela of the University of California, Santa Barbara, a spokesman for one of the two groups reporting their data today.   So far the unofficial theologians of the press haven't mentioned the pantheistic possibilities should Super symmetry and its attendant multiplicity of Higgs particles be the next theory to be backed up by the worlds most powerful and expensive physics experiment, still only running at half power.  Even if it isn't and whether we have the Higgs particle or something that doesn't quite fit the model, we've had another giant step for mankind, not that many in the US will take much notice. A door has been opened to a whole new level of understanding and that reveals many other doors. It's another giant step away from mythology and speculation as the key to understanding.

 Perhaps few will notice that this was a discovery made in Europe because we decided we couldn't afford such a machine and the next most powerful accelerator at Fermilab was shut down last year because you can't have wars and tax cuts and take giant steps even though of course, we're number one and the greatest country in the history of the galaxy and the only place where freedom rings.  Who wants all those scientists here anyway, taking jobs away from Americans and looking down on us all -- confusing us with talk about reality being far more complex than you can dream about -- infinitely more complex than the Bible tells us.  It's not a sad failure, it's a victory!

Rocket's red glare

For the last month, the supermarket I frequent has had racks and racks of fireworks on display and of course the local fireworks store - a rather large one - is having a two for one sale today. The local newspaper has a front page article on how to use fireworks safely.   

The firecrackers, the sparklers, the small bottle rockets, pinwheels and other things you can fill your shopping basket with are, of course quite a bit smaller and less dangerous than the artillery your town or city are likely to be using  to light up the sky and they're probably set off remotely by professionals, but making smoke and noise on the 4th of July is still well ingrained in our tradition even now that candles are so lethal we're advised never to use them, burning leaves in the fall is highly illegal ( even though shooting a gun in your back yard no longer is in Florida) and every TV show or advertisement that shows anyone driving a car has to have a disclaimer advising us that only trained professionals on a closed course should ever, ever drive fast enough to make the fallen autumn leaves rustle.  A show about Alaskan bush pilots I often watch begins with the warning never, ever, to fly planes "at home."   Seriously.

I have to think it's sad that the fondest memories I have of childhood: riding my new Raleigh  for endless unsupervised miles with the wind in my hair and without body armor, the smell of burning leaves in October, of gunpowder in July -- things like riding beltless and booster seatless in Dad's new MG when I was 9, these are all things that could get you arrested today. Today when life is so dull and safe we retreat into a violent virtual world, when kids are afflicted with lethal allergies because they never encountered a bacterium until they were 25 and can be expelled from school for carrying a nail clipper or an aspirin tablet.

Yes, for sure  -- some Budweiser addled, shoeless swamp cracker will hold a firecracker too long today and blow off a finger and some kid will burn his hand with a sparkler, but I'll guarantee a bunch of people will be killed on jet skis and in boats, will drown at the beach and drive their cars under the influence and kill someone coming home from the municipal fireworks show, but that we really aren't going to be asked to ban boats, beaches or beer. Not yet, anyway.

Coming from Illinois, of course -- a state where your car can be confiscated if sparklers are found in your trunk ( but not a firearm) -- it still takes me aback that one can be a criminal so vile and loathsome  that your neighbors will shun you in one place and in another place,  sometimes right across the state line, you're just an ordinary, law abiding citizen with a good shot at running for mayor.

I saw on TV just the other day, that Chicago has seen more than a 35% increase in violent murders lately, while New York as had a 17% decrease.  Seeing as both cities have the most severe gun control laws in the country, I'm interested to know how the "ban it" people are going to explain it all by the need for more and stricter bans.  Of course the current Chicago crime wave is the result of  our fiercely defended 'substance' bans which finance gangs and gang wars,  just as it was during Prohibition when anyone could buy a Thompson submachine gun, or "Chicago typewriter" at the hardware store but a beer would land you in the slammer.

A cynic might be tempted to claim that bans are better at causing crime than at preventing it, but although I'm tempted to agree, I'm cynical enough to think that such an observation wouldn't persuade anyone that I'm not a terrorist and a public menace for having bought sparklers along with the Bratwurst yesterday or that I enjoy an occasional afternoon at the shooting range.  I'd really like to give my grandson a ride in my Corvette too, but alas. . .

Talking to the Man, Once Again

So, every so often, I like to reach out to my governmental representatives (OK, and sometimes I like to reach out to other people's representatives, but let's not worry about that now...).

So, today, I sent emails to my guys in the Senate and the House. (Both good, noble men fully worthy of my support. So far.) And, because I'm lazy, they were identical except for the greeting. (I've mentioned that I'm lazy, right? Because it's true.) And it went like this.

Dear Sen. Bingaman, (or "Rep. Heinrich," depending)

The Republicans are now trying to spread the lie that the penalty that's imposed under the Affordable Care Act for not having health insurance is a tax. You should probably get out in front of this, and for one good reason.

If it's a tax, they can repeal it through the reconciliation process.

Fortunately, this is easy to rebut. Justice Roberts didn't say that the penalty is a tax: what he said was, it was legal for Congress to levy a penalty in exactly the same way that it is legal for them to apply a tax.

And if you go to his opinion (all 150 pages or so), Roberts comes right out and said that it isn't a tax.

Page 11:

Before turning to the merits, we need to be sure we have the authority to do so. The Anti-Injunction Act provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessmentor collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the per-son against whom such tax was assessed. 26 U. S. C. §7421(a). This statute protects the Government’s abilityto collect a consistent stream of revenue, by barring litigation to enjoin or otherwise obstruct the collection of taxes.

Translation: "We can't rule on it if it's a tax. We're ruling on it. Think about it." Page 12:

According to amicus, by directing that the penalty be “assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes,” §5000A(g)(1) made the Anti-Injunction Act applicable to this penalty.

The Government disagrees. It argues that §5000A(g)(1) does not direct courts to apply the Anti-Injunction Act,because §5000A(g) is a directive only to the Secretary of the Treasury to use the same "methodology and procedures" to collect the penalty that he uses to collect taxes. Brief for United States 32–33 (quoting Seven-Sky, 661 F. 3d, at 11).

We think the Government has the better reading.

Translation: "This guy says it's a tax; the government says it isn't. We agree with the government."

So, later on, (page 35) when he writes "The same analysis here suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty," he isn't saying it's a tax, just explaining what part of the Constitution applies (which is why he phrased it "may for constitutional purposes be considered").

You need to keep them from taking over the argument by rewording reality. Go out on the floor and explain, on the record, in simple words, that life doesn't work like that.

If you want to get the attention of the media, apologize that reading is so difficult for our Republican friends. Or explain that things like this are why the Texas GOP is trying to ban critical thinking.

Or maybe explain that, if they're so upset that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional after all, they should consider getting on anti-depressants. After all, admitting that you suffer from depression isn't going to count as a preexisting condition any more.

TO FRACK OR NOT TO FRACK - THAT IS THE QUESTION

What the frack!?! NC Governer Bev Pardue has been fighting to keep irresponsible fracking practices out of North Carolina.  She vetoed GOP backed legislation that would have allowed a broad, indiscriminant use of fracking and it went back to the NC  legislature where, despite a tight vote an override was expected to fail.

Enter Becky “Benedict Arnold” Carney a DEM from Mecklenburg County who “accidentally” hit the wrong button thus giving the GOP enough votes to override the Governor’s veto. Becky made a great show of regret and horror all the while knowing she could not change her vote. I’m sure the staging was nauseatingly contrived to all who witnessed it.

I hope the voters in the greater Charlotte area will be sure to usher her out next election but I wonder if Becks will care all that much. Care to share the amount your off shore bank account has grown recently, Becky?  Or maybe there’s a plum job waiting for the Beckster…

Three Pigs for Doctor Higgs

Deus ex machina at CERN



Fortunately someone turned off Dad's new flat-screen before I could draw my gun.  I guess my family knows me well enough to predict my reaction to the CNN headline about how "Science" might have found "proof of God" but my Colt Mustang .380 was safely locked out of reached in the car anyway. 

If you've read my rants long enough you probably know my frustration with arguments that attempt to prove some  concept of God since any of them, even if they weren't fallacious, don't argue for any one of the infinitely possible concepts of any deity over another, but of course, CNN was just being coy so that the viewers wouldn't tune out during the endless commercial breaks.  If we had waited long enough we would have  found out that they were only speculating further about a possible July 4th announcement by CERN that they have observed a Higgs Boson; that thing not one person in 10,000 is able to describe, but nonetheless knows as the "God Particle." What must he weigh if he's composed of such heavy particles?


I've often wondered why a incomprehensibly small yet massive particle  might have anything more or less to do with God than another. God after all seems to exist in some massless form;  in some formless, ineffable state that can interact with matter and energy, but is composed of some undefinable, self- negating, insubstantial non particulate substance one calls "pure spirit" and is therefore free from the constraints imposed by the universe on matter and energy.  Does not God also claim neutrinos and neutrons as well? If we create such particles artificially, aren't we creating gods, or at least "godstuff?"


The Higgs particle, if it exists, is postulated to  explain the property we call mass in the classical model of physics.  If gods have mass, it's hard to allow them divine properties if the universe is consistent and it's also hard to explain how some subatomic particle pertains exclusively to Krishna rather than Yahweh or Puff the Magic Dragon and maybe harder to explain why any god could not create a universe without inertia if he wanted to.  Can a boson be a trinity or a pantheistic infinity?  Crank up the accelerator because inquiring minds want to know.


If it were up to me, I'd have called it the ego particle but if it had been up to the Nobel Prize winner and Director of Fermilab, Leon Lederman who coined the regrettable term in his pop-Science book The God Particle and launched the meme that sunk a billion minds, it would have been called The Goddamn Particle but for his editor's objections. How I wish that editor had had more courage and that we'd been spared the endlessly dimwitted godbothering about some subatomic particle being "proof of God."

Of course those  who are prematurely jubilating today about how science proves God -- those disciples of those who have been battling against science for centuries, aren't going to accept the actual scientific proof of the age of "the world" or anything else that challenges their celebrated certainties and I doubt they'll feel remorse about the closing of Fermilab's accelerator for lack of funds, giving the opportunity for divine revelation to foreigners.  If those those atheistic, socialistic geeks, buried with their witches circle under the soil of Europe were the ones to prove that the Bible and all our holy Christian beliefs in all their wholly different forms are true, so much the better.

Romney's Paycheck

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ACA Decision: Area Dino Declares Chief Justice Roberts Honorary Dinosaur

So nobody is going to write up today's SCOTUS decision?  You're leaving it to the simple lizard who is more or less beneath good and evil? 

Well, Chief Justice Roberts and the SCOTUS majority deserve this dino's praise for taking the nonpartisan high road: apparently, he saw the Court's job as consisting mainly in finding a reasonable way to square the ACA's mandate provision with the constitution, and along with four other justices, he did so.  If you call it a tax instead of insisting that the Commerce Clause backs you up in "regulating" this kind of commerce, it's okay.  I think the Administration can live with that, though I suppose it's a spot embarrassing to call the enforcement mechanism a "tax" on people who refuse to pony up for some health insurance.  Same goes for the Medicaid part of the ruling, which was sterner. 

The point is, the legislative branch of gubmint had passed this thing, and Chief Justice Roberts didn't see it as his prerogative to find easy ways to crush it.  He seems to have rewritten or reconceptualized the ACA somewhat to make it fit his reading of the constitution.  The SCOTUS looks pretty damn good today, thanks in large part to one John Roberts, Bush 43 appointee.  He is hereby declared an honorary dinosaur.  That's the highest award I can bestow on a human.  It's sort of like getting a Congressional Medal of Honor.  The majority's decision was wise, and they deserve praise for it.  They won't get it from the ultrapolarized 'Baggery, of course, but it should be obvious why that's the case.

I think people will become more positive about the ACA as more of its provisions come online.  It isn't perfect and a lot of us would prefer something more thorough, but it's certainly going to move us closer to where we should be.  I watched the president's brief announcement after the ruling, and as usual he impressed me.  He comes across as decent, earnest and thoughtful, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say about any of his most dedicated opponents.

Let them hire chauffeurs!

Considering the constant need for scapegoats required by political movements today; in this time when the traditional bigotries are less effective then they were in the days of minstrel shows and segregated lunch counters, it's not surprising to see article after article telling us just how bad for everyone (everyone of course means Randian Rangers) it is to  allow  older people to survive past the end of wage earning, what with how much it costs us real working-folk (and parasitic political journalists) to maintain that surplus population.  After all, back in the dog eat dog golden age, people knew their place and had the decency to die in their 50's and 60's after a few years of abject poverty and disease - like God and the Conservatives intended.  Too old to work?  Die Grandpa, die.


We are asked by Liberals ( and how we hate Liberals) to tolerate the strain of civilized values on the economy these days, and those values require constant inflow to the Medicare and Social Security systems, but of course it's rarely mentioned that today's recipients have been paying into those funds for their entire working lives and that future recipients are building credit for themselves as well as supporting current recipients. In fact that's how private insurance plans work too but at a higher cost.  


But I've talked this to death and my rant today has more to do with the more important things in life -- like cars and driving.  David Frum writes in Newsweek today that "old people" once again are jeopardizing the prosperity and safety of the eternally and righteously young and -- if we allow it  -- they are going to bankrupt our country -- because after all, that undefined category of drivers: the elderly, has more accidents than anyone but teenagers.  It's hard, of course to argue that teenagers are going to bankrupt us in that way, but really, the most common tool of douchebag Republican flim-flam artists like Frum is to create categories and attribute the proposed characteristics to all individuals in that group.  Of course by bankrupting the economy, Frum really means his insurance rates might go up - you know just how his health insurance rates are so high because so many people have to resort to the most expensive health care: the emergency room.


In the interests of glasnost, I have to mention that I'm old, but with 20/20 vision, unimpaired senses and reflexes; with decades of  accident free driving, on and off of race tracks and in high performance cars, I have to weigh a million miles and 50 years of experience in rain, snow, sleet and dark of night against the skills of  chubby cheeked Dave, whom I'm willing to bet would soil himself  in circumstances I've safely dealt with since before he was born.  SUV drivers have a higher accident rate, so do those who like to talk or smoke while driving. Frum is silent about those ad hoc groups.   Could it be that this really isn't about economics or about safety on the road?



But we have to get them off the road, says the Frumster. We have to cut them all off from society and relegate them to dependency and poverty because, this isn't actually about cars or safety, it's about shirking responsibility, about increasing economic disparity - the foundation of modern Conservatism. It's about promoting poverty and suffering so that the elect can live better while their parents are put out on ice-flows to die where we don't have to see or pay.  Don't weed out bad drivers, let's disenfranchise millions of good ones and justify it with fallacious arguments.


Why not simply require vision and driving tests for those over a certain age?  (perhaps 16 for New York drivers) That way guys like Paul Newman and me can continue to race cars into their octogenarian decade and the incurable menaces of all ages -- the cellphone addicts, the people who stop on tollway entrance ramps and slow down for green lights -- the incurably confused  -- can be put into oil drums and sunk to the bottom of the Marianas trench along with David Frum.  Why not argue for decent public transportation like they have in decent countries so that perhaps I could actually get somewhere without driving?  What are you -- a tax and spend socialist?  Let them get chauffeurs!

Just a quick note

Did you know that Dana Perino, the former waste-of-a-Presidency's spokesmodel, is now Dana Perino & Co? (Motto: "Working to make the world worse since 2007.") She apparently has made a business out of selling herself to whoever will pay her rates. (This does not make her a whore, by the way - for what she charges, she deserves to be called a "prostitute.")

And she even has a contact form, which I thought was convenient.

Ms Perino,

I happened to see your tweet about "Tomorrow on the menu after SCOTUS: just desserts." I thought I'd mention something.

My sister was downsized by her corporation last year, and was then diagnosed with breast cancer. Without the Affordable Care Act even fully in place yet, the changes already happening in the insurance industry ensured that she received treatment, and that she would not be penalized for her "pre-existing condition" for the rest of her life.

And her situation was only on the fringes of the healthcare law. There are thousands of people whose lives have been saved by the legislation that President Obama put in place.

Am I saying that it makes you a bad person for gloating prematurely over the possibility that the ACA will be struck down? No, I'm not.

I'm saying it makes you a bitch.

Have a good life. Try not to get cancer, you evil, self-centered herpes sore on the face of humanity.

Sometimes, it's kind of nice just to reach out to somebody and say "Hi," you know?

Obey in the name of freedom!

"[It] is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom
 of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many
rights given by nature to man."



-Pope Leo XIII-

Face it, we live in a country in which the KKK can adopt "We shall overcome" as a song about their own struggle for freedom, where the unrepentant South can pretend that their secession was about protecting  freedom -- and where only a 'genetically inferior Liberal,' as Allen West, Republican candidate for Congress in my district calls me, would mention anything like irony.



So really, I shouldn't be surprised to read in the local paper that the Roman Catholic churches of the Florida's Treasure Coast are hosting a "Fortnight for Freedom," in a pathetic attempt to avoid having to comply with the demand that in return for the tax exempt status they consider their due, they treat secular employees in the way that other employers must do. Perhaps the hope is that while a major political party, fond of asserting nearly absolute personal freedom can get away with saying "Take your government hands off my Medicare," they can get away with campaigning against reproductive rights, the equality of civil rights and other guarantees of a secular Democracy.



Forgive my recurrent mention of irony and my  ridicule of organizations that promote freedom only when it suits the need to maintain authority, but if there is one single organization that has campaigned against religious and even secular freedom longer than any other in the Western world, it is the Roman Catholic Church, and please remember that heresy is just another word for religious freedom. We've had nearly 2000 years of genocide, repression, torture, war and the most grizzly executions imaginable resulting from claims to divine authority.  A decent respect to the opinions of mankind, as Jefferson wrote in 1776, seems always to have been at odds with the peremptory proclamations of  God's enforcers, and the idea that we the people have an innate and inalienable right to liberty and  pursuit of happiness that owes nothing to the demands of priests, preachers and shamans is clearly anathema to the Catholic Churches of the Treasure Coast, much to their shame.



The fact is that nearly all American Catholics ignore the ban on birth control that is based on a rather flimsy interpretation of  what their God(s) said to a man who never existed in a time long before birth control was an option.  This embarrassing little attempt has little support amongst anyone but churchmen (Church women have no vote and are sworn to obedience anyway) and it certainly has nothing to do with our freedom.  I hope that some people, even in this stupefyingly religious and resoundingly Republican part of the country, will see through it.