Porterhouse Experiment

ROCKET CITY BLUES

SPACE NEWS!

 “You could do something Joey. You could die.”     
 --Richie to his brother Joey in A History of Violence

Our Rocket City Blues Science Team once again gets the scoop and dumps it right in your lap, fresh from SPACE!

NASA acknowledged today after about a month and a half of dicking around that the Porterhouse Deep Space Mars Expedition has returned to earth from its eleven-year journey. The capsule was rushed to Rocket City’s Marshall Space Flight Center where it was cracked open to the murmurs and then to the uneasy silence of hundreds of engineers in lab coats. You have to wear a lab coat if you are doing this sort of thing, watching scrolling data for like 100 months with just hour-and-a-half piss breaks and some Mr. Coffee and maybe takeout.

Initially NASA spokespersons had little to say about the implications of the mission, which was to see what effects protracted deep-space travel will have on human spacepersons like you and me. After some pressure and even some provocative goading, a reticent Marshall Space Flight Chief Col. David ‘Dutch’ Stewart said,

“The team are at this point somewhat less than elated, in fact they are a little troubled, some of them totally bummed, by the implications of what we found in the capsule vis-a-vis a manned or rather personed expedition to Mars at least maybe for now.”

Following his remarks, Col. Stewart presented a slide show that included a shot of the mission capsule being rocketed into space in 2001, and two ‘before and after’ shots of the capsule payload.

Exhibit A below shows the 1.9 kilogram Porterhouse steak sent speeding toward Mars at the outset of the expedition. Exhibit B on the bottom shows the Porterhouse or what might be the Porterhouse after its eleven-year journey to the Red Planet and back.

Asked about the transformation of the robust Porterhouse into a kind of carbonized shit smudge Col. Stewart said that,

“For now we’re thinking cosmic rays. For a human crewperson we now think a voyage to Mars and back would be the radiation equivalent of maybe standing four blocks from ground zero in Hiroshima on a sort of Lazy Susan and spinning around for roughly, say, five or maybe six hundred consecutive thermonuclear explosions.” Or “for the ladies,” he added, “this trip to Mars will be like passing out in a tanning bed for 17,000 years.”

Sexy long missions like the Porterhouse Deep Space Mars Expedition always end with a touch of dismay. A couple of guys drop dead at the consoles, the monkey comes back a total asshole, a crewperson or two they move to Taos and start taking hallucinogens, another one she grows a beard.

This mission is no different.

Col. Stewart ended his remarks on a personal note:

“The cosmic rays. We were thinking last year maybe one of those lead aprons they put over your nuts when you get your chest x-rayed. But fuck it I’m not going. Are you going? I’m not going. We could probably scratch up some psycho around here to go but I’m not going. Not a chance.”

This is outer space. It is very very big but a great deal less than almost everything.

House Repubs to Abolish Death Benefit

DC Doodling

House Republicans Vote to Abolish

Social Security Death and Burial Benefit

In a vote deemed “largely symbolic” like virtually every House vote since 2008 and neither more nor less imbecilic than the rest of them, House Republicans have unanimously voted to eliminate the $255 Death and Burial Benefit established in 1936. The action was spurred by Rep. Darell Issa (R Ca), a former car thief and Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who only last week became aware of the benefit when his wife died.

The move was hailed as “revolutionary” and “forward looking” by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R Va) who had done his math. “This decision will save each American taxpayer up to $11.43 over the next eighty four years, reduce the deficit, and stimulate small businesses. This “so called ‘death tip’ paid for by hardworking men and women is actually a free ‘life tip’ for the dead people “without regard for quality of the service”, he added.

The American Association of Funeral Parlor Operators was somewhat dismayed but, doing the K street shuffle, characterized the House vote as “monumental”. Their spokesman has said,

“We have long been supporters of Rep. Issa, whose family, like ours, has been dedicated to repositionings for modest profit, in his case not of the dead or the apparently dead, but of misplaced cars. We also support Rep. Cantor, although with that name he is probably a Jew. We’ve had some problems with the Jews, we get squeezed with the quick burials, 24 hours, what’s the big hurry.”

Rocket City Blues has not had quite enough time to respond thoughtfully to this modification of Your Social Security Benefits, which will be announced through a mailing titled “A Modification of Your Social Security Benefits” in one of those envelopes where you fold over and tear one strip off on your left, then one on your right, then maybe the top or the bottom, you’re not sure, so you put your finger in the bottom, something rips, your mailing is fucked, you toss it. I know you do. And then you get it back out of the trash because it could be a check for one of those group action law suits about exploding cars or for some piece of crap that broke and they are hoping that with the odd envelope you will just throw the check out. But no.

Try to stay positive. Soon you won’t have to deal with these envelopes. Your kids, no way.

The Social Security Death and Burial Benefit was put in place in 1936 when for no evident reason sharply increasing numbers of dead people appeared abandoned along the roads, dumped behind gas stations, or tossed in rivers, especially in the South and also in the Midwest but a little less there because the rivers were dried out. There is not much sense in dropping off somebody in a river who has died if there is no water to wash that person away or cover them.

Watch in these pages for a follow-up featurelette,

What To Do When You Are Dead:

Money Saving Tips for the New America.

This is history. This is how almost everything works.

Your Job Is Your Joke

The Rocket City Comedy Corner

Your Job IS Your Joke

      

Close but no cigar! Sigmund Freud, who famously connected jokes with salacious thoughts in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, got it somewhat wrong. Because if you think about it, jokes have much more to do with your job description than with things you may be thinking but maybe not. Who knows.  Anyway, we at Rocket City Blues don’t have this “unconscious,” no way.  We think

your job is your joke and your joke is your job.

For example, a neurosurgeon might say,

So this patient comes in with a brain tumor the size and consistency of a squash casserole. “Doctor doctor, she says, I need a  brain transplant or I will die!” You say, “Calm down. Step over here to my replacement brain display case. On the top shelves,” you tell her, “we have plenty of expensive brains, those are men’s brains. Down on the bottom shelf, those are women’s brains, they’re cheaper.”

“I’m shocked,” says this woman, very angry. “Why do the men’s brains get top price, and the women’s brains go cheap?”

“Calm down,” says the doc. “No offense,” he says. “This is easy. The women’s brains are used.”

By contrast, a nurse in cardiac surgery might say,

So, an hour and a half late and wearing tassel loafers and plaid golf shorts, in walks Doctor Dickhead. The first nurse he verbally abuses. The second he gropes. The third . . .

Well, you see where this is going.

Engineers, they generally go for knock knock jokes:

“Knock knock” says the engineering student.

“Whose (sic) there?”

“I Dare You.”

“I Dare You who?”

“I Dare You to make me take English.

Police persons generally go for jokes about violence and horror, which they live with every day and for which they are paid not enough:

So this guy is parked along I-65, he’s gut shot with 357 Magnum, and he has his license and his registration but you guessed it no proof of insurance.

Your soldier might say,

So this Haji, maybe he’s eight, nine, whatever, comes up pushing his bicycle and there is no chain on this bicycle and the rear tire is flat. He has a package, a basket. Charlie squad’s point man says “waste him”. But a cat jumps out of the basket. The boy drops the bike. He chases his cat. No joke. I’m too young for this shit. I’ve always been too young for this shit.

Your Rocket City space buff might say,

So Wernher von Braun, mum on the slave-labor rocket factory with hanged workers dangling from cranes and death rates higher than Auschwitz and mum also on the unmanned flying terrorism project, Wernher makes a mental note to freshen up his resume and then he says to the squad of GIs who have captured him,

“Hey, you got a job for me?”

This is comedy. This is what makes life sometimes almost bearable.

Rocket City Signage Mystery

Rocket City Signage Mystery

The appearance of the sign above in several yards, alongside a detour service road in the North Parkway Improvement Project, and—quite a few of them—in a ditch near the quarry has caused some confusion at Rocket City Blues.  As Bugs Bunny would say,  “What’s up?”

Either “Loretta Spencer Huntsville’s Mayor” has been cutting work way past the ‘personal day’ quota or she has been—to use a euphemism that had a little currency maybe ten years ago—‘working at home.’ Then again, it’s just possible “Loretta Spencer Huntsville’s Mayor” has tried to get into the Office of Mayor Tommy Battle one too many times and has been thrown out onto Fountain Circle by the staff. I think this would have been after warnings.  Tommy Battle Huntsville’s Mayor is, after all, a gentleman. Next time somebody should call the police.

Although it’s perfectly clear that ‘Impersonating a Clergyman’ is not a criminal offense in Rocket City or, for that matter, in any of the Gulf States, plus Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas, part of West Virginia,  and probably all of Utah, Impersonating a Mayor might just be a crime. In any case, we need to work this out.

Some people have seen the signs “Loretta Spencer Huntsville’s Mayor” when driving, and, being perplexed and distracted, they have collided with pets, children and roadside trees. It’s worse than texting. At least when you are texting you know what you are intending to do. But with the “Loretta Spencer Huntsville’s Mayor” signs, you are just totally caught up in a what-the-fuck moment.  And then:

BAM!

There go your insurance rates. Call the lizard.

Kiss a Physicist Delayed

Notice: “Kiss a Physicist Today” Rescheduled

            The celebratory “Kiss a Physicist Today” scheduled by Rocket City Blues for Saturday, July 8 has been deferred. The day seems to have passed unnoticed, and, due to a somewhat tepid response and a bit of confusion, the event will be rescheduled as

Kiss a Physicist If You Want

Maybe Around 4:30 on a Friday Sometime

Next Month

Watch for confirmation and guidance in these pages. We don’t want any conflict with

Hang a Banker Day

 which is a matter of somewhat more pressing urgency and is coming up real soon. Besides, we are getting complaints along the lines that Rocket City Blues should “get off this physics, I didn’t take it” and “more fizz and less physics, more fizz and less physics” and so on.  

Higgs Boson and the Standard Model

Physics Update: Higgs Boson and 1970s Standard Model Getting It On

            The science staff at Rocket City Blues tell us they are delighted to report that the Higgs Boson particle, recently outed as a dude, is dating the 1970s Standard Model shown above. But as for me, I’m not so keen on this development.

For a time, high energy particle physicists were concerned that the Higgs Boson might not show up, leaving The Standard Model a little unsure of herself, although why, I can’t tell you. But everybody--at Fermilab, CERN, the UARocket City ED Non-Collider, all the places--has sighed with relief that the couple have hooked up.

For those who were born, say, after 1985, and who therefore don’t recognize the Standard Model, Wikipedia will as always straighten us out. We quote verbatim:

The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory concerning the electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear interactions, which mediate the dynamics of the known subatomic particles. Developed throughout the mid to late 20th century, The Standard Model is truly “a tapestry woven by many hands” because it was cobbled together by many brilliant minds, sometimes driven forward by new experimental discoveries, sometimes by theoretical advances. It was a collaborative effort in the largest sense, spanning continents and decades^[1]. The current formulation was finalized in the mid 1970s upon experimental confirmation of the existence of quarks. Since then, discoveries of the bottom quark (1977), the top quark (1995), and the tau neutrino (2000) have given further credence to the Standard Model. Because of its success in explaining a wide variety of experimental results, the Standard Model is sometimes regarded as a "theory of almost everything".

To this remarkably sweaty piece of prose, we at Rocket City Blues say, What is this? The Big Bang of Metaphor? The Wikipedia guy says The Standard Model is “a tapestry” made “by hands” and then that it’s  “cobbled together “by . . .  minds”, many of them, only to be “driven forward” sometimes by “advances”?  And then they sent her out to do some  “spanning [of] continents and decades”? She must be about 17 and maybe 115 pounds in this shot. And she’s certainly not dressed for travel.

Physicists should date a little earlier than in their 40s. Maybe start in high school. That would help.

You never tell a girl she is a theory. Tapestry maybe, you might get away with that if the mood is right, but you do theory, you’re history.

Rocket City Blues sympathizes with these many brilliant minds working up a sweat and offering more credence to the Standard Model. But for me she has all my credence right away. And then some. So let’s cut the crap about “the top quarks” and the “lower quark.” This is not science. This is self-evident. And you never tell a girl that she is “finalized”, even if your grant is running out.  And you never tell her she is “almost everything”. She is totally everything to me and she always will be. That’s what you say.

I would quit collaborating with those many other guys.  I’d get out of the lab, pronto.

To hell with the Boson. Let him go back where he came from. And the same for Higgs the meddling old fart who introduced them in the first place.

What was I doing in the 70s, reading?

It is too late. It is always too late.

This is physics. This is why everything finally is sad.

WeAculpa

WeAculpa: Corrections and Apologies

            Rocket City Blues has been hit with surprisingly heated, even enraged, and possibly threatening requests for apologies, corrections, and retractions following July 11’s post, The House of Representatives To Do Self-Examination. It’s no excuse but maybe an explanation to say that two of our staff are adjusting their meds, which might account for some problems of punctuation, spelling, misquoting, and managing tone. But more important, we think that

some of you people need to calm down. Just calm down, would you?

CALM.THE.FUCK.DOWN!

O.K. now. We are doing our best. And everything is not our fault.  We will take this pile of stuff one by one. Just please stay calm.

(1) The staff of Rep. Spender Bowcuss writes that the speech we referred to in our last post was not in fact about federal subsidies for kudzu but rather for okra. We apologize. Also, the congressman’s staff point out that it is “not very nice to make fun of peoples (sic) names since they din’t (sic) have no (sic) choice in the matter when they were just bornt “(sic). We agree. Rep. Buttkiss is probably a very nice man, and, as we know, there is always a little Baccus in each of us, though not so much Spenser unless you are an English major. Lots of people in our region, especially politicians, are named for the eminent writers and literary characters of the past. There’s Homer Barron. There’s Artur (sic) Davis. There’s Byron Scrugg. And Shakespeare Shitstake, of the famous Opalika Shitstakes. Respect.

(2) The staff of Sen. Dick Shelby seemed to be irked about a point of feasibility, claiming that “a snorkel can’t be used that way.” We disagree.

(3) One reader up in Tony, Alabama and seventeen in Cullman claim that the illustrative image at the fore of the feature proves that we are “big city Leftists because the funger (sic) is pointing to the Left.” Well, in respect to the finger, we had something else in mind.

Several complaints addressed the “DISCLAIMERS” section of the feature, to which we may say that sequence is almost entirely corporate boilerplate for which we bear no responsibility whatsoever. To be sure, there might be something objectionable in the line, “Maybe your health care provider is a dick,” so we’ll address that and another thing that is not our fault.

(1)         The line at hand or rather, more specifically, the term in hand could be in some sense read as sexist, since your doctor could be a girl doctor. In fact, my doctor is a girl doctor, and she is terrific, a saint. And probably the vast majority of primary care health providers are women, since the boy doctors are all going for the big bucks in heart surgery and oncology where the dying people are old and have some money. Probably too most of us would not be calling a girl health care provider or for that matter any female professional a dick. Maybe Ayn Rand, or Margaret Thatcher, or Leni Riefenstahl, but mostly no.

Well, back to the point. After a little reflection our readers may be sympathetic with our editorial practice as regards the somewhat bad word at hand. In our opinion, the “bad” in the semi bad word is contextual. After all, Dick Clark? No problem. Dick and Jane? Everybody there is terrific, and Puff too. Dick Cavett? Smart though maybe Smartypants. Spotted Dick, the canned English comfort food? Pretty funny, but they are British and they like it.  Moby Dick? A very big, big one.  And finally we come to Dick Cheney.  Certainly not as big as Moby Dick. In fact, kind of withered and crooked.  After he flunked out of Yale in his first semester and putzed around in Wyoming for a while, Dick Cheney slipped into Washington and served another Dick, Dick Nixon, famous for saying right on TV “I am not a Dick.”  Having learned the practice in the highest places, so to speak, Dick Cheney went on again, this time to slip into the Halliburton company, famously engaged in global dickery, including a certain fail-safe device on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

But to return to my point again, if some of our readers want us to be entirely non-sexist in our remark about your health care provider possibly being a dick, we would have to use for balance with “a dick” the other word, the bad word. Which is perplexing, in a way, since referring to someone as a “dick” will generally not get you thrown out or even mildly disliked. In fact, people will usually think it’s funny. But the other word is bad. Now, in Britain, especially in Scotland, if you are in a pub and there are a bunch of guys getting hammered after a soccer game, you will be sure to hear at least one of them call another that bad word. But they don’t always seem contemptuous or mean when they use the bad word, and if they are not already good-naturedly punching the daylights out of each other, they seem to like being called that. The bad word. We at Rocket City Blues are uneasy with the bad word, but we have nothing at all against its signified. In fact Mother Nature made us very happy with that, the signified and the referent and the whatever. It’s all good. Think about it. We do a lot. However, we’re not using the word. No way.

(2)         Finally, as also regards the Disclaimers section of the last post, several readers complain that if you are dead, you cannot telephone a law firm, and that is true.

This is language. This is how everything works.

US House to Do Exams

US House of Representatives to Do

 Self-Examination

            The US House of Representatives—for our European readers, formerly an organ of governance but of late  performance art for rednecks, simpletons and venial bastards of every variety imaginable—has voted with a modest majority to perform medical examinations upon each other. House Ethics Committee Chairman Daryl Issa (R CA), a former car thief, announced today that on the coming August 1 “We’ll just pair up on the House floor and perform prostate exams on each other. This will prove that Obama’s Big Government takeover of doctoring is  socialist and too expensive. Americans just want to take care of themselves.”

            Rocket City Blues has learned, through its contacts in DC, that what Paul Ryan (R Wi), 15-year-old prodigy and chairman of the House Budget Committee, has tagged the “you do me, I do you” program in fact erupted somewhat spontaneously in the House several months ago but was deferred when more than adequate supplies of lubricant were mustered but only a few pairs of sketchy looking latex gloves. Dismayed but never discouraged, Rocket City’s own Rep. Mo Brooks (R Al), gamely stepped forward to say, “We don’t need gloves. I’ve done it. Saves even more”, but the remark elicited only scattered applause.

            In fact, some in the House were vocal in their opposition to the performance of mutual prostate examinations, perhaps in part because the House activities are all televised, even when somebody like Rep. Spencer Bachus (R Al, and seriously, that is his name) is holding forth in support of kudzu subsidies at 1.15 am to  nobody but an audio tech who has fallen asleep. Democrats in particular were heard to complain that they have been “bending over too much already,” which may possibly have been intended as a joke, and even a few Republicans objected, pointing out that “everybody in Congress gets really good coverage, even dental.”

            There are always spoilsports, even in Congress, and Senator Al Franken (D Mn), rudely stated that advice on technique “might be had in the Senate. Dick Shelby (R Al) has had his head up the ass of the insurance and bank  lobby so long he wears a snorkel.” Order was only partly restored by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who pointed out that “there are ladies present,” a remark that caused a measure of confusion.

Disclaimers. Prostate cancer is a medical problem that should be taken seriously. Self examination or mutual examination is not recommended. See your doctor. The actions described here performed by professional drivers on a closed circuit. Do not try at home or without adult supervision. May cause certain side effects. Unplug all appliances before taking this medication. Consult your doctor if you have any of the following symptoms. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery if you get hammered on this medication. Not approved for use by children or nursing mothers. Do not attempt if you are pregnant, HIV positive, or have an immune deficiency disorder. Not for resale. If prosthesis cracks, shatters, or impales you in the groin, seek immediate medical assistance at the nearest VA hospital, although not the ones that are closed. The other one. Dispose of unused capsules safely by wrapping them in a sealed plastic container and mailing them to your daughter who cannot afford them. Your health care professional may just be the only person who cares about you at all, but they know that you know that they know you are shit out of luck. May cause impotence and protracted weeping. Wash hands after use. If you or anyone in your family took this medication and are dead, call Boswick, Burns, and Bell LLP. Be sure to tell your partner. Discontinue use if suicidal thoughts persist. If suicidal thoughts persist, shoot yourself. No claim of superior legal services intended. Move to Canada. Not to be taken with other NCAIDS. If your head begins to explode, place an index finger in each ear and scream loudly. Help should come, although  next week. Remember: Only you can prevent forest fires. See your doctor if drooling worsens or you trip over your uterus. May cause projectile vomiting, wheezing, or sudden death. Make sure this is not anywhere in the record. In the event that you experience an erection lasting more than four hours, call Bristol Palin. Excluded coverage if injury results from act of God. If rash appears or breathing stops, consult your health care professional. You did what? It’s where? In the event of soreness, inflammation, funny walk, or pain level nine on a scale of one to ten, seek your orthopedic surgeon at gated community but you are not getting through the gate no way. May be addictive. May cause certain sexual side-effects, including hair tongue, extra nipples, and chemical castration. The Social Security Administration wishes to inform you that funeral and burial insurance coverage is $250. Since1936. Your health care professional may be a dick. Coverage limited or suspended if by acts of Congress. See your financial advisor soon. Brownsboro establishes 911 service. Sold only for the prevention of venereal disease but not so good for some of the new ones. See your doctor if you are dead or lightheadedness returns. 911 service by subscription only. Consult with your insurance company about extended coverage packages. Certain previous medical conditions may not be covered. Please use your keypad to enter your group number. Pfizer Pharmaceuticals not responsible for misuse, overuse, underuse, or use. Always wear a condom. Sorry. The identification numbers you have entered are in error. Ambulance or hearse fees not covered. Not intended to prevent pregnancy. See your family doctor, or, if your family doctor is working night shifts at the Emergency Room or at Starbucks, see your cousin who was a nurse or your uncle who was a medic in Korea and is not dead yet. Sorry, what was that response? . . . Sorry, what was that response? . . . Sorry, what was that response?

Sorry.

Von Braun Civic Center a Rocket!

For Sure. The Von Braun Civic Center is a Rocket

An Honors History student at the U of  Rocket City has uncovered a treasure until now hidden in the archives of Huntsville’s history, a trove of design sketches for the soon-to-be constructed Von Braun Civic Center. The file, once in the possession of the now defunct architectural firm Smyth, Tuckett, and Hairdryer, LLP, has in it the image reproduced above, which, astoundingly, proves that the Von Braun Civic center was intended all along to be a rocket. 

The student, checking out his find at the Army Missile Command, was initially told by Col. Quentin ‘Quickfire’ Johnson, “No way. It’s too fat. Too short.” But when our student pointed out the Civic Center cum Rocket is in fact “no fatter or shorter” than the missile represented in Rocket City’s former logo, Johnson hesitated. “Maybe, maybe not.”

            The Civic Center, beloved venue for dozens of gun swaps, childrens’ beauty pagents, and sales events for bass boats and obsolete computer parts, has long been thought to have unused capacities inherent in its design. “Where am I,” people were often heard to say. “Where’s the fucking restrooms?”

            Given the implications of the design sketch, the Civic Center’s board of directors have ordered that the facility will be shut down from July 13 through July 16 to check to see if there might be a warhead in the dome. That matter being settled, the ice in the main hall will be melted and the usual 461 tons of dirt will be brought in to prepare for this years’ Tractor Pull and Motocross Race scheduled for July 18.  The band Alabama will provide the music during the Pulls and Races.

            We are thrilled to know it’s just possible that a great many of us in Rocket City will soon do more than reach for the stars. We’ll be going up there. Or at least in that general direction.

Rocket City Airport Receives Award

Rocket City International Airport Receives Award

            The Association for Securing Tariff -Free Zones for Weapons Sales announces that Rocket City International Airport has received its First Prize Award for Most Lethal Ambience in a Public Space.

            The ASTFZWS’s award is granted to “the public space that consistently and colorfully presents commercial images directly or indirectly suggestive of the most mayhem, violence, and lethality that can be imagined per square yard.” The awards committee stipulates that the devices and instruments imaged should be “presented in such a way as to imply that they are (a) in some sense associated with the viewer whether in fact they know that or not, (b) that they are incapable of failure or misuse, (c) and that they are easily sold to just about anyone anywhere without tax or tariff or public review. “

            At the awards ceremony on K Street in Washington, D.C., General Samuel ‘Boomer’ Turgidson, USAF Ret and Chief Consultant for the ASTFZW, remarked the intense competition for the award, noting that a certain soccer field in Afghanistan, a disused warehouse in Belarus (part of the former Soviet Union), a two-block area in front of the Wailing Wall in Israel, and an international airport in Yemen had been very close contenders for the award. But General Turgidson, recalling to the amusement of all present the “Iran-Contra matter” as what won the distinction of “International” for “Rocket City Airport,” went on to explain that the mega-TV playing Fox News 24/7 for every waiting flier, the montage of Nazi weapons engineers, and the almost total absence of non-violent imagery-- except for a spaceman hanging by a cable over the restrooms and two pictures of golf courses -- were the decisive factors that brought the prize to Rocket City.  “Walk in and you’ll think you’d already made your flight and maybe something has happened and you’re at an airport in Syria or Saudi Arabia. Walk out and maybe you’ll think, “No way I’m ever going back in there. No way,’” he quipped.

            Never without accolades, Rocket City is internationally known as a recession-proof haven for economic vitality. Among recent awards the city has received is the prize for the North Parkway Improvement Plan, hailed as the Most Protracted Infrastructure Project in North America since the Erie Canal, the Engineering Watch Award won not in fact by engineers, who have better things to do in Rocket City, but by two city policemen who noticed that the newly completed Rocket City jail was about to pitch over and fall into the creek bed on which it was built, and the Murdoch Prize for the metropolitan area with population over 300,000 slowest to notice it no longer has a daily newspaper.

Miller Analogy Restored

W mounts his pony by standing on British Prime Minister

Correction: The Miller Analogy Restored

            The Rocket City Blues Department of Science and Technology Reportage has received a somewhat testy objection to July 2’s column on this blog,  “Higgs Boson Particle is Justin Bieber,“ where we reported that as per Professor Miller’s theory—or “The Miller Analogy”--the Higgs Boson Particle could be understood as Justin Bieber at a cocktail party getting moshed by groupies who appear to gather mass but we don’t know for sure because we were not invited.  Our correspondent acknowledged that he had, with “the best intentions,” sort of “sexed up” the Miller Analogy by substituting Justin Bieber--in fact born too late to be at the cocktail party--for “the former Prime Minister” of Great Britain, who is claimed to have been in Professor Miller’s original version.  While confessing the liberty he took with Professor Miller, the writer adds a claim for the “essential legitimacy” of his amended “Miller Analogy” for how the Higgs Boson Field works.

            At Rocket City Blues we are almost unanimous in our conviction that truth in science reporting is worth considering, and so we replace the sexed-up and errant “Miller Analogy,” pretty good but maybe “Miller Light,” with a restored Standard Model Miller Analogy:

Imagine you are on a balcony looking down at a cocktail party and you see an  amiable upper-class English twit following right behind  George W. Bush, the former American president who walks this way and that through the cocktail party, swinging his arms in an exaggerated fashion and spreading his hands out so he will look like a big man. Now, after you see how closely the amiable twit follows as W wanders about trying to find where he is supposed to be, follows W so closely you think his knees might be glued to W’s ass, you realize suddenly that this follower of W is not as you first thought, a gluon, a subatomic massless particle, but rather Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of Britain. And so, remembering that appearances are not quite enough in physics, you shift your paradigm, so to speak, and you see that what you took to be gluon is in fact Tony Blair and also the Higgs Boson particle at the same time, admittedly for reasons that are not quite apparent to anyone except perhaps Professor Miller.

In any case, suddenly Tony Blair the Bosun seizes W by the shoulders and tries to steer him toward the banquet table where massness is being served up. But W is massless, so, like a pingpong ball and a microsopic speck of dust on a ping pong table with something sticky on it, Tony Blair and W are simply stuck together and glued in place. But then there is a sudden commotion. A flash. A kaboom. And a country in the Middle East, not the one that was already smacked but another we were not quite expecting, is blown to fucking smithereens. Totally.  Up on the balcony, you say to yourself, “Did I just see that, or what?”

This is physics. This is how everything works.

Hooray for Higgs

Hip Hip Hooray Hooray Hooray for Higgs!

            All best wishes, gratitude, and veneration for Peter Higgs, whose “Higgs Boson Field Theory” has been affirmed.  

It is especially moving that Higgs should be British, a man of an era that saw British culture’s very life nearly crushed for the second time in half a century by German aggression and that saw Britain’s superb schools and research universities savaged by Thatcherism.  

As the clip noted below may begin to suggest, he is the Standard Model of the sort of modesty, humor, and patience that enabled him to live with grace into his 80s and see his intellectual imagination wonderfully vindicated. Like Newton a hero of his times, he’s helped make everything so very much more interesting.

http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/life-boson

In honor of Peter Higgs and the enormous gang of colleagues who found his boson, Saturday, July 7, is

INTERNATIONAL KISS A PHYSICIST DAY!

Watch for a special post on How to Spot a Physicist.

Higgs Boson is Actually Justin Bieber

Flash Update: Higgs Boson is Actually

 Justin Bieber at a Party in 1993!

A special report just released on the Internet has brought much needed clarity and elegance –and, to be sure, a tad more controversy—to Physics’ answer to the question, “Just what is the Higgs Boson?” Under the header “Analogies, please!” the web essay identifies the explanation fostered in 1993 by Professor David Miller, a physicist at University College London—a pretty good place, if not quite Oxbridge. Anyway, Professor Miller’s metaphor—technically a ‘conceit,’ or extended metaphor, as English majors know-- is as follows (and you should follow it closely or you will miss the Higgs boson altogether):

“Imagine looking down from a balcony in a ballroom, watching a cocktail party below. You’re already hammered on wine-in-a-box and sort of depressed because you’re a physicist and probably won’t get hooked up here or anywhere else until maybe July 4, 2012 when at least for a while everybody will think theoretical physics is really hot. Well, to get back to the analogy, just plain folks try to go from one end of the room to the other, they can walk through easily, with no resistance from the party crowd. In fact, nobody gives a shit about them because they are plain. The party crowd don’t even see them. They are, like, invisible. But when a celebrity like Justin Bieber shows up, other partygoers press around him so tightly that he can hardly move … and once he moves, the crowd moves with him in such a way that the whole group is harder to stop.  The partygoers are like Higgs bosons, the just plain folks are like massless particles, and Bieber is, like, this year’s toy boy for fifteen-year-old girls but also like a massive Z boson. Although, actually he is kind of slight. In fact, a skinny guy who is sort of short.”

Now, this metaphoric analogy is useful because it makes you feel like you are at the cosmic cocktail party, somewhat. However, you’re actually still up on the balcony, so you are pretty much out of it, so to speak, and that brings up a kind of quantum problem that maybe Professor Miller forgot about for a little bit just when he was making up his metaphor. The quantum problem is, How can you know what is going on down there without actually milling around the toy boy with the groupies? And, if Justin Bieber is so mobbed up he can hardly move, you won’t really know jack  about what is actually happening, and you will truly want  simply to get the fuck out of there.  And there is another problem. A big problem. Justin Bieber was born in 1994, a year after the Miller Analogy was released on the normals, the just plain folks, so  just how could he be down there getting mobbed at the cocktail party? Is this because time is plastic? Professor Miller isn’t saying.

So, Professor Miller’s metaphor has some problems. But not to give up on explaining the Higgs Boson particle to just plain folks like you and me and the others who are wondering about why they came to this particular party and why they are massless, the Manchester Guardian’s science reporter Ian Sample (seriously, that’s his name), gives us yet another metaphor for what seems to be happening:

“Imagine a tray with ping-pong balls scattered on it. The balls roll freely around the empty tray. But then, if you spread a layer of sugar over the tray, the balls sitting on the piled-up sugar don’t roll so easily. In fact, if it were hot, they would get stuck, but that’s another problem. You don’t want your balls stuck on any tray, do you? So anyway, the grains of sugar introduce a kind of inertial ‘drag,’ kind of like my prose style at this point, and that’s the kind of effect that the Higgs field supposedly has on particles with mass.”

This is pretty good. It’s sweet, with the sugar, and also fun because generally people have a positive concept of ping-pong balls. However, hardly anybody but maybe particle physicists play ping-pong anymore, and when they do it is generally in a garage with some skanky smells and spidery tools laying around and the idea of sugar clotting up on the table isn’t helping things at all. And you know as well as I do that the net is sagging or busted and at least one of the two paddles, if you’re lucky enough to have two, has no handle. So I don’t come away from this very keen on Higgs and his particle. I’d just as soon play beer pong on the table, if you want to know.

It seems we keep getting clogged up, clotted, and stuck, but if you want any more information on the Cry for Analogies, here is the site:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/03/12547980-the-higgs-boson-made-simple

Also, Google Images just possibly  might have an image of Justin Bieber as a zygote in 1993. Somebody needs to fact check the dates.

Higgs Boson Lost

Flash. For Immediate release:

Higgs Boson Particle “Now Totally Lost “Beneath Metaphorical Language of Physicists Attempting to Speak to Normals

            BBC news reports that Sir Bendix Sprott of Worthingham College, Cambridge, has formally announced this afternoon that the much sought Higgs Boson Particle was recently found but is now “totally and irrevocably lost” beneath a “shite-load of metaphors” that has burst forth this month from the world’s high energy physicists.

            Known since Newton for their determination to be the only academics who communicate with sufficient caution, clarity and meticulous care to avoid entirely what Professor Sprott referred to as “untruth and twoddle,” this scientific community has surprised intellectuals everywhere by abandoning sense for extravagant and surprisingly stupid metaphor.

            Professor Noam Chomsky, noted linguist and scientist, commenting today on what has immediately been termed the “Sprott Effect,” said in an interview on the PBS science program, “Pop Smarts,” that “it all started with the fucking ‘boson’. I mean, just a moronic figure of speech from the start, complete with his bellbottoms, his stupid little sailor hat, and his fucking whistle.  Why, “ Professor Chomsky added, “why can’t we fucking  say what we fucking mean? It’s not a fucking play or a fucking movie, after all, it’s the fucking universe. What did the fucking little boson do, whistle up the whole fucking universe with his fucking little whistle? Why not the fucking Higgs Irish cop? Why not the fucking Higgs crossing guard?”

            Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the International Association of Physicists, speaking on condition of anonymity, has cautioned that the so-called “Sprott Effect” might be “a tempest in a tea pot, so to say,” and that “we should all be cautious and reserved as the boson steps forth on deck, “ lest he “change his mind, as he is wont to do, and sails away upon seas we have as yet not even imagined, let alone mapped, seas with tides, to be sure, even though we haven’t seen them, and maybe won’t ever see them, since we don’t have the maps—at least not yet—so we don’t know which way to sail, or, for that matter, whether we have a sail, or maybe we just think we do because, well, it’s standard, right?”        

           Still, some high energy physicists have not been so constrained, including one Oxford-based CERN investigator who has written that the cosmos in the soon-to-be revealed new, new  Standard Theory (or in brief the “New-New”) will “in effect” be “a ubiquitous Higgs snowfield that affects other particles traveling through it depending on whether they are wearing, metaphorically speaking, skis, snowshoes or just shoes.”  And John Ellis, professor of theoretical physics at King’s College London and guest professor at CERN, has confidently remarked, “Higgs has no place to hide.” Asked whether he was referring to Professor Higgs, who first invited his colleagues to imagine a “particle that would tells us why there is less nothing than something or the little “boson” himself, Professor Ellis simply appeared dumbfounded by the question, only muttering again, “Higgs has nowhere to hide.”

            To be sure, Professor John Guinon, a longtime physics professor at the University of California at Davis and author of “The Higgs Hunter’s Guide,” said on Tuesday somewhat more helpfully, “If the calculations are indeed correct—and we are, thousands of us, picking over the heap with care—then it is fair to say that in some sense we have reached the mountaintop.” Asked after his address at a symposium in Davis whether he meant to say that Higgs was, as Professor Ellis had said, “hiding”, perhaps “on the mountaintop,” perhaps himself in snowshoes or in the flipflops he customarily wears, in some sense, Professor Guinon also appeared to be momentarily confused. Some suggested that there was a touch of panic in Guinon’s eyes, as though, perhaps, he was expecting a follow-up question as to why, if Higgs was hiding on the mountaintop all along, the hunters had not simply gone up there and found him.  But symposium moderator Gregorio Bernardi of the University of Paris and researcher at Fermilab, defused an uncomfortable moment by interjecting that there are “strong indications of the production and decay of Higgs bosoms” [sic] and that “It’s a real cliffhanger”, thus appearing to support Guinon’s suggestion that Higgs, or the bosons perhaps, were indeed hiding, or fruitlessly trying to hide, from the hunters on the mountain, but were not so much on the top as hanging over a cliff near the top.

            This morning a measure of clarity was finally achieved when a spokesman for high energy physicists released on condition of anonymity the claim that “a sort of cosmic molasses pervading space is what gives particles their heft. Particles trying to wade through it gather mass the way a bill moving through congress gains riders and amendments, becoming more and more ponderous.” To be sure, a journalist was heard to say following the release of this sentence (or more precisely this sentence and a dependent fragmentary clause) that it “had all the heft and ponderousness of a steaming bison turd” and that anyone who wrote it should have been “tossed out of the ninth grade on his ass. “ But the total absence of comment from the scientific community suggests a basic satisfaction with the molasses, so to speak.

Finally, as global science quivers with anticipation like a bowl of chocolate pudding when it has not quite firmed up and you are trying to jam it into the second shelf of the refrigerator but it does not quite fit and you are thinking, fuck all, maybe I should eat it now but you are not sure, we do well to remember the words of Sir Arnold Giblet, author of the standard biography of Sir Isaac Newton, the great English father of physics: “Right, so, the apple hit him in the head. Right? That’s just bullshit. They made it up to make it clear. It’s bullshit. Never happened.”