I appreciate the email I get. Seriously, I do. I appreciate it even more when folks tell me about bits of news, or fun stuff, or pictures I might be able to use on the blog.
Honestly, it’s wonderful, and saves me a lot of time and effort. FSM knows I can’t even keep up with all the pareidolia out there. So thanks!
However, every day for weeks now I have been getting about a dozen or more emails, Facebook messages, tweets, smoke signals, and psychic flashes about the LHC rap. The same LHC rap I posted about over a month ago.
I know, it was a minor link in a minor sort of post, so most BABloggees might have missed it. So to be more clear: Thanks to everyone for sending me the email about the rap. I saw it. If you want to see it too, it’s on YouTube.
I should probably mention that I also saw the website(s) that post the status of the planet after the LHC turns on. That’s got it’s own post too.
So please continue to send me stuff, as I love it and might use it. But the rap? I’ve seen it, and now it gets it’s own post and everything. You can stop telling me about it now. So the next person to send me that link gets their email address posted publicly on the biggest woowoo site I can find, where I will tell them it’s from a CIA spook who faked the Moon landings and is hiding the evidence of Nibiru and has the second bullet and has been conducting mind-control experiments and has Big Pharma in their pocket and alien corpses in their basement and is, in fact, Bigfoot.
And that’s a wrap.
September 10th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Hey Dr Plait, did you see that one about…..
September 10th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I am sorry, but the video was too cheesy for me to see it completely.
Hey, maybe everyone should get pitchfork and torches and get the next person who sends the links. 
September 10th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
On a sort of unrelated note, I have a question. Whenever looking up info about particle accelerators and cloud chambers and whatnot, one of the first pictures you get is of these nice straight and twisted lines (math people: yeah yeah, I know there’s no such thing as a “curved line”)… sort of like this one: http://tinyurl.com/5usa9s
Now, here’s my qestion. What exactly do those lines represent? Aren’t they the path particles took? If so, doesn’t that violate the Heisenberg principle, since you know exactly what trajectory a particle took (and presumably the time from the collision to when the particle was detected)? I don’t get it.
September 10th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
i’m tempted to send the rap to him…just to see where he posts my email
haha…
btw, have any of you seen this video?
September 10th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
BA & a mob pursuing rap emailers:
BA: They’re headed for the old mill!
Emailer: No we’re not!
BA: Well… then, let’s go to the old mill anyway to get some cider!
September 10th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Speaking of rap, Phil, omg — you HAVE to check out the LHC rap!!
I can’t believe you haven’t seen it yet…
September 10th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
You KNOW the Big Pharma rap would start with:
I like big bucks and I cannot lie…
September 10th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I’m having the EXACT SAME problem. I posted it. And now people are e-mailing me about it like I never heard of it. I guess that shows me how many people actually read my blog …
September 10th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Please, Phil, don’t unleash the conspiracy theorists on anyone, no matter how many times they continue to email you the LHC rap. It might be considered “cruel and unusual” punishment.
As an aside, I used to work for an ISP that took walk-in payments. Every month, without fail, one nutcase of a customer would bring in his payment and attempt to direct whoever took the payment to look up whatever the conspiracy-of-the-month was. It was awful having to deal with him every month, but eventually he was abducted by aliens and we never heard from him again
‘mute
September 10th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
This is so exciting! I think I’m getting a hadron.
September 10th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
OMG!!! Phil, I bet you haven’t seen this one… it’s a rap about the LHC! You really should post it on your blog!
September 10th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Big mistake Mr plait mate, your just gonna get double the amount now.
September 10th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
@Geoff, me too…
September 10th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Don’t know whether this is already here or not, but check out this interesting web-cam showing on-line video from the LHC…!
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
September 10th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
If you don’t want to hear about the LHC rap anymore, perhaps you’d like
The Cosmonauty
or
Elektronik Supersonik
or perhaps you’ve seen those as well.
September 10th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Oops! I’ll try the first link again.
The Cosmonauty
September 10th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I say we should all send Phil e-mail about the rap, but use other people’s e-mail addresses.
Ideally people he has man-crushes on.
That would be amusing.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
did someone mention pareidolia?
September 10th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I’m tempted to send the links along just to get all those accusations lobbed at me.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
posted publicly on the biggest woowoo site I can find, where I will tell them it’s from a CIA spook who faked the Moon landings and is hiding the evidence of Nibiru and has the second bullet and has been conducting mind-control experiments and has Big Pharma in their pocket and alien corpses in their basement and is, in fact, Bigfoot.
Dangit, Phil – you’ve got me figured out. Nuts.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
How about this moon hoax site? They do have some convincing pictures…
September 10th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Come on, Phil. It could be worse….I got the Mrs. Field’s Cookie Recipe urban legend via email in 1986 (shortly after I got email) and have been getting the same frakkin’ email for over 22 years now from people who assume I have NEVER seen it!
Strangely enough, I also got an email telling me that someone named Barack Obama was a Muslim…I have to admit, it didn’t make much sense at the time
September 10th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
The clip just demonstrates that geeks can’t dance.
Or rap.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
*Cry*
I sent some “where has bad astronomy been” photos a couple of months back and they never saw the light of day.
I carried that damn book all around circular quay and taronga zoo because I forgot a back pack. (Lucky for me I remembered a girlfriend! Pack horse FTW)
*/Cry*
Oh well.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
OK, so how about this thing?
“A hundred prisoners are each locked in a room with three pirates, one of whom will walk the plank in the morning. Each prisoner has 10 bottles of wine, one of which has been poisoned; and each pirate has 12 coins, one of which is counterfeit and weighs either more or less than a genuine coin. In the room is a single switch, which the prisoner may either leave as it is, or flip. Before being led into the rooms, the prisoners are all made to wear either a red hat or a blue hat; they can see all the other prisoners’ hats, but not their own. Meanwhile, a six-digit prime number of monkeys multiply until their digits reverse, then all have to get across a river using a canoe that can hold at most two monkeys at a time. But half the monkeys always lie and the other half always tell the truth. Given that the Nth prisoner knows that one of the monkeys doesn’t know that a pirate doesn’t know the product of two numbers between 1 and 100 without knowing that the N+1th prisoner has flipped the switch in his room or not after having determined which bottle of wine was poisoned and what colour his hat is, what is the solution to this puzzle? — Alan B. at EFI, Inc.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
I’m just trying to find a good picture of alpinekat
September 10th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Fair enough, but I’ve got to rap your knuckles for the following:
I’ve seen it, and now it gets it’s own post and everything.
I don’t normally castigate people for that (sadly too common) error, but I expect a higher standard from you, Phil!
September 10th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
in sadder news though:
Doomsday fear leads to teen’s death
Article from: Reuters, from correspondents in Bhopal
September 11, 2008 02:14am
A TEENAGE girl in central India killed herself on Wednesday after being traumatised by media reports that a “Big Bang” experiment in Europe could bring about the end of the world, her father said.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24328349-5001028,00.html
September 10th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
@Samu
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle gives a limit on how fine a resolution you can simultaneously determine both position and momentum. You can’t even be anywhere near that limit using those lines.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Yeah, but did you see today’s Google logo? It’s a good one!
September 11th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Eric,
That is truly a tragic story. However, I would be careful in placing the entire blame on the media. I have struggled with clinical depression in my life, and there is usually more than one factor in bringing a person to that point in life. I am thinking that there were probably things going on such as depression in this young girls life prior to this. This may have been the thing that pushed her over the edge though. It’s sad that it may not have been picked up on before.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:20 am
Hello again, Phil, as you encourage to send you links and your blog deals with everything, I decided to revive a bit our discussion about “stupid games in Ossetia”. We have a video record that goes on the internet, news chennels and newspapers. I tried to find anything on this in US press, but manage to find smth only in a German newspaper that I’m unable to read
So, here’s the link: http://www.1tv.ru/newsvideo/127729 . It’s a cut from main Russian channel news, with video from US Congress. It’s translated, but one can hear the guy saying in the background “Georgia started war, not Russia”. It can be clearly herd.
I found a link to that speech in two Russian and two Georgian newspapers. As you may guess, our nespaper says congress accused Bush’s administration in lie. Georgian ones say that congress accused Russia. So, I cannot judge from the sources, but, you’re being able to make educated guesses – I’d like to hear your comments, and mainly I’d like to know what’s going on the press and TV in US now? Was that congressman (who apparently was basing his speech on military intelligence) heard? Thanks.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:34 am
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-82279. Here you go. Your goverment says you’re not about democracy, you’re about pipeline.
September 11th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Those status update sites are hilarious. Thanks. By the way, you can catch Abe on Conan fairly regularly. He’s still around…
September 11th, 2008 at 4:12 am
I lately had a delicious diner in some Sushi restaurant in uptown Denver… Only later to find out that the guy paying the bill was a Big Pharma Lawyer. Just a note I wanted to make, but not really important for the post.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:47 am
What?! You expect people to pay attention? How elitist!
Sent you a link a while back to some very pretty atmospheric phenomena – and here it is again, since I just rediscovered it.
Perhaps you’ll like this feature from Roswell.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Did you see the PHD comics series on the LHC. I found it very interesting.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1066
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1067
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1068
September 11th, 2008 at 8:58 am
WHEREAS I have known the BA for many years, through email contact and having an opportunity to job shadow him at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and
WHEREAS I have been daily reading posts and followed the transition from the original Bad Astronomy site to Discovery, and
WHEREAS I have subscribed to both the RSS and BA’s Twitter, and
WHEREAS I, after discovering the LHC Rap yesterday did knowingly and willingly forward it to the BA,
LET IT BE KNOWN that I take full responsibility for this posting and the thread that follows.
My apologies to all.
Now, did someone say something about Mrs. Fields cookies?
September 11th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Phil, I’ve been reading a book published in 1956 by a John R. Pierce of Bell Labs. Check this quote from p.81 of “Electrons and Waves”
“Cyclotrons with diameters a great as 17 feet have been made. Such a huge beast will accelerate particles to energies of almost half a billion volts.”
I think it’s fantastic to see the pace of technology in the sciences this past century. Pierce would freak if he knew of the LHC!
September 11th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
@Moonliner:
Nothing about cookies, but, hey, there’s this awesome rap about the LHC going around the toobs. I don’t think Phil has posted it yet…
Hey! Why am I getting all kinds of WOOHOO in my email? I just had some guy from the CIA send me evidence that the moon landings were faked!