I hope you plan on getting to the Auditorium *very* early on Wednesday!
OMF
I’ve seen a lot of these videos. This is definitely one of the better ones. Perfect timing, delivery, and masterful use of in jokes.
http://www.flisser.com Bob F.
I’ve reserved my seat at CERN’s webcast. Not sure how I’ll be awake at that hour, though.
Have a good trip.
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com WoundedEgo
The Higgs will do that to you…
ellipsis
This video is of course funny and meant as a joke — but just for outsiders’ benefit: if the Tevatron had kept running it would _not_ have reached 5 sigma discovery of a Standard Model Higgs in the remaining mass range by now or for at absolute very least the next couple of years (more like at least 3 to 5 years more), and would not be very competitive with the LHC in nearly any other area either. For an SM Higgs in the remaining mass range to be discovered in the western hemisphere first, then there would need to be an SSC in Texas now. One can hardly blame a few DOE bureaucrats for that — it was and is a _much_ larger and broader issue — in fact a societal one. It’s an issue that I think requires some degree of reevaluation of priorities as Americans and how much we are interested in understanding our universe that created us, and not the other way around.
Michael Weiss
This parody is in poor taste, made grotesque by the the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe and the Holocaust denial in the Middle East and South Asia.
Torbjörn Larsson, OM
Good material and execution.
@ Michael Weiss:
I don’t think the popularity of many similar and a lot older parodies agree with this being “poor taste” or even “poor” taste. It may be “poor” sense.
But I don’t think it hurts but promotes democracy, being free speech. Democracy is a good counter agent against racism, nationalism and diverse forms of denialism, as is free speech.
YMMV of course, but I wouldn’t agonize about these things as much as I would agonize about actual anti-semitism et cetera. Don’t shoot the neutral spectator or, worse, your supporters.
I loved as much as you’ll receive carried out right here. The sketch is tasteful, your authored subject matter stylish. nonetheless, you command get got an shakiness over that you wish be delivering the following. unwell unquestionably come further formerly again as exactly the same nearly a lot often inside case you shield this increase.
Michael Ssiew
AH!! the rise of the Hitler denialers. Run for the hills. Wake up dipstick. The world went thataway –> It is called “parody” If you stil have a problem, then you are s.i.c.k
Gary
Just a note:
Discover is the Fred Hoyle Society.
Flavio Nogueira
I also find the parody of bad taste and not funny at all. Maybe it is funny if you don’t understand German, who knows…
@ Michael Ssiew: I don’t think that someone is “s.i.c.k.” just because s/he has a problem with it. I also felt a discomfort when I watched this video. I was not expecting to find something like this in this blog. But it’s my problem, of course. If you and others find it funny, I have nothing particularly against it.
http://pixypi.tumblr.com pixypi
Anyone who hates these parody videos because they’re supposedly distasteful and so on, have you seen Downfall yet? It is a really great movie and shows the Nazis in a different way than we’ve seen in the past. We see how they’re just people, not supernatural monsters, and just how horribly screwed up they were. How horrible Hitler really was as a member of our species.
Parody is a great way to further take power away from something. Like the Great Dictator, The Producers or pretty much any Mel Brooks movie. It really helps to illustrate in an easy way the craziness of it all. How can you, or a kid who grew up on Mel Brooks movies, take nazism, anti semitism, white power stuff and so on serious if you’ve spent so much time laughing at them particularly as you learn the facts of the past?
Parody, and Downfall, help to strip the almost mythical nature away as well as really bring down to Earth something that seems too horrible to have ever happened before much less again.
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Cosmic Variance
Random samplings from a universe of ideas.
About Sean Carroll
Sean Carroll is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests include theoretical aspects of cosmology, field theory, and gravitation. His most recent book is The Particle at the End of the Universe, about the Large Hadron Collider and the search for the Higgs boson.
Here are some of his favorite blog posts, home page, and email: carroll [at] cosmicvariance.com .
