Teaching the SM in rhyme: an opening bid December 1, 2007
Posted by dorigo in Art, Blogroll, games, humor, language, personal, physics, science.1 comment so far
Somebody suggested I should write particle physics lessons in rhyme, and I do love a challenge, if it stimulates my highly nonlinear mind (somebody else suggested to do a video thereafter, but I’ll pass on that one; a third somebody commented in rhyme). Well, today is a Saturday, and since I did not feel too well, I felt entitled to some pastimes… Below you can find my production: a summary of the Higgs mechanism in five lines, for starters.
[The usual Limerick's AABBA scheme applies, while the division in syllables is much sketchier... Syllables in English are a real nightmare, at least for non-natives. I recollect learning a long time ago from Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column on SciAm that the language owns a 10-letter syllable: scraunched, but later found out that there are even 11-letter ones actually: broughammed, squirrelled.]
Anyway, here’s my bid at a concise, to the point SM lesson in rhyme:
Boson masses break L-gauge invariance,
And the model just can not keep its stance.
So just pawn the four Goldstones,
Open three W-mass loans,
While a fourth, called the Higgs, keeps the balance.
Of course, you are welcome to contribute to the project by explaining your favourite piece of physics likewise, if you feel in the right vein. Just follow the AABBA quintuplet template, with (if possible) the usual rythm: da-da-dum da-da-dum da-da-dum for the 1st, 2nd, and 5th verse, and da-da-dum da-da-dum for the 3rd and 4th.
Just a limerick December 1, 2007
Posted by dorigo in Art, games, humor, internet, language, personal.5 comments
Minutes after writing a limerick in a comment to a post on Bee’s and Stefan’s blog, I got envious. “What the hell, I have my own blog… That creation of mine, although not anything to be proud of, should live in mine, not theirs”. Yes, the misery of a blogger’s soul. Anyway, I decided to steal it from there and paste it in my own. The rationale being that if blogspot fries their data bank, I’ll still have this post backed up. And copying it also allows to fix the last verse, which was missing one syllable (added “please”). Oh well. Here it is.
If you think you’ve got something to say,
Just open your own blog today.
Your voice will be heard,
And you will get referred,
But please don’t let that bring you astray.
Not much, but considering I am not an English native and I spent finding rhymes 90% of the fifteen minutes it took me to write it, I am reasonably satisfied.
Make love, fight AIDS December 1, 2007
Posted by dorigo in news, politics, social life.2 comments
Today is the world day of AIDS. One date a year to remind ourselves of a horrendous virus which has killed about 25 million people since its inception in the early eigthies. A frightening figure, which dwarfs G.W. Bush’s bid with his “war of on terror” -he has probably totaled not more than a mere million deaths (and some studies even say just 600,000) directly connected to his actions in Iraq, although admittedly in only four years.
AIDS is not defeated yet (nor is Dubbya, but I am more optimistic in the latter case). It kills much less than it used to since anti-retroviral drugs have been created, but still, it is growing. We too have grown used to it, we have learned to live with it, we seem to have forgotten it. That is wrong. We should continue to fight it. This year alone, AIDS will total 2.1 million deaths. This is a shame. Sure, famine and other plagues are even more a concern, but AIDS could be fought very effectively with little effort if there were no opposing hands.
Instead, where are the leaflets I used to see distributed to high school students, informing them of the danger, and explaining how to use a condom? Where are the ads paid with government money ? Sure, there are a few, but they are run late in the evening, as if the target were men and women in their sixties. Too little is done. The Vatican’s influence in secular activities in Italy is nasty.
Being a juvenile forty-years-old man, I still talk to youngsters. And I do not like what I hear. Condoms are used much less than I would think, even by twenty-something people which one would trust to be mature enough to avoid putting their life at stake for some extra contact. Even those who use them tend to do so only towards the end of intercourse, as if this was safe enough for them! And an increased objectification of women has boosted the practice of swallowing sperm during fellatios. A lot is still to be done, quite frankly.
Making love is good. If we did it twice as much, we would spend less time watching television, we would all be a bit happier, more relaxed, less cranky. Our hearts would be healthier. It needs not kill us with a stupid virus. Just use the f***ing condom, damn it!
To do my little bit, today I am posting the picture on the right, which I doubt will do much good to the average reader of this blog, but is anyway a better picture to post around today than that of a child dying of AIDS, which was my second-best choice.
One, unfold the condom. Be careful, they come out of the box with the tip protruding the way it should: just position it on top of the gland with the tip upwards, and start unrolling -if you chose the wrong side you’ll be unable to unroll it all the way. Two, press the tip to squeeze the air out - not a crucial point, but it will work better for you. Three, have fun. Four, keep the edge tied to the base of the penis when you extract it. Five and six, dispose of it - and do not forget to wash yourself. You are not allowed to fool around with messy hands!
