All posts by Dona

Bad day

Rant

I slept later than I’ve slept since I was in high school (or perhaps college) this morning, awaking at 10:20 am — fitting because I was dreaming I was in high school again.

A bunch of annoying things happened throughout the day including my breaking a handle on a pan we got for our wedding.

After buying a new pan and having a “discussion” with my husband about it I went outside to cool down (although it was 90 degrees out there). I saw an enormous bug walking up the maple tree in the back yard. On further inspection I noticed it was carrying a dead cicada and deduced it was a cicada killer wasp. I then came inside to look it up online to be sure I was right.

Cicada killer wasps don’t actually kill cicadas, according to a website I found. They sting cicadas to paralyze them, then carry them to their nest and lay their eggs in them. The cicada remains alive as food for the growing cicada killer offspring.

I decided that the cicada was having a worse day than I was.

LHC

Humor, Technology

The only things I really know about the Large Hadron Collider are what I read in Angles and Demons. Or was that The Da Vinci Code? Or maybe it is a different supercollider altogether. I know it’s not Fermilab. I’ve been there, and besides, my dad’s ship is helping to save the world from its radiation, but that’s another story.

Whatever — the Internet’s abuzz today with LHC references which are mainly jokes.

I didn’t understand this one from xkcd.com until I did a search on LHC and saw what was going on today in Europe.

Luckily we have a way of knowing if the world has been destroyed:

Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet?

If you know how to view the source code*, do it on that page — it’s worth it.

*on windows, right click and choose view source or view page source. If you are on a Mac — you’re on your own.