Tuesday, September 9, 2008

meanwhile, on the franco-swiss border

They're turning on the Large Hadron Collider tonight in the hopes of observing the Higgs boson at long last.* There is, apparently, a very small chance that, rather than allow us to observe the building blocks of matter, the Large Hadron Collider will instead DESTROY THE EARTH. Am I alone in thinking that "Large Hadron Collider" is kind of a meh name for something that could create a black hole in the middle of Europe? Maybe it sounds better in French (Grand? Gros?). With the sensibilities of American Anglophones in mind, I propose the following list of alternative names for the LHC (along with the media outlets that would likely use them):

- CBS: Super Hadron Collider 1000
- Spike TV: World's Most Extreme Hadron Collider of Death
- Comedy Central: Best F*cking Hadron Collider Ever
- Adult Swim: The Doomsday Device
- Food Network: The Hadron Juicer
- History Channel: Man's Hubris Made Manifest
- Japanese TV: Super Happy Crasher of Hadrons for Maybe Ending Things
*I have only the barest understanding of the preceding sentence; the following sentence should probably be evaluated accordingly.

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