Sunday, June 29, 2008

For my son.... see? It'll be ok!

Scientists: Nothing to fear from atom-smasher

By DOUGLAS BIRCH, Associated Press WriterSat Jun 28, 3:08 PM ET

(I think it is toooooo funny that when I posted this story for my son who was feeling a bit paranoid about it at the time I receive a rare and freaky- deaky comment attached to it from "anonymous reader" which blows my whole plan! LOL! Funny little bizarre people....)

The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN — some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.

"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.

David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.

"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.

The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.

The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings.

Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass.

The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings.

The theory could resolve many of physics' unanswered questions, but requires about 10 dimensions — far more than the three spatial dimensions our senses experience.

The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near Chicago, has been debated for years. The physicist Martin Rees has estimated the chance of an accelerator producing a global catastrophe at one in 50 million — long odds, to be sure, but about the same as winning some lotteries.

By contrast, a CERN team this month issued a report concluding that there is "no conceivable danger" of a cataclysmic event. The report essentially confirmed the findings of a 2003 CERN safety report, and a panel of five prominent scientists not affiliated with CERN, including one Nobel laureate, endorsed its conclusions.

Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet."

One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed.

On Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department lawyers representing the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the case.

The two agencies have contributed $531 million to building the collider, and the NSF has agreed to pay $87 million of its annual operating costs. Hundreds of American scientists will participate in the research.

The lawyers called the plaintiffs' allegations "extraordinarily speculative," and said "there is no basis for any conceivable threat" from black holes or other objects the LHC might produce. A hearing on the motion is expected in late July or August.

In rebutting doomsday scenarios, CERN scientists point out that cosmic rays have been bombarding the earth, and triggering collisions similar to those planned for the collider, since the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

And so far, Earth has survived.

"The LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, what it has been doing for billions of years," said John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist at CERN.

Critics like Wagner have said the collisions caused by accelerators could be more hazardous than those of cosmic rays.

Both may produce micro black holes, subatomic versions of cosmic black holes — collapsed stars whose gravity fields are so powerful that they can suck in planets and other stars.

But micro black holes produced by cosmic ray collisions would likely be traveling so fast they would pass harmlessly through the earth.

Micro black holes produced by a collider, the skeptics theorize, would move more slowly and might be trapped inside the earth's gravitational field — and eventually threaten the planet.

Ellis said doomsayers assume that the collider will create micro black holes in the first place, which he called unlikely. And even if they appeared, he said, they would instantly evaporate, as predicted by the British physicist Stephen Hawking.

As for strangelets, CERN scientists point out that they have never been proven to exist. They said that even if these particles formed inside the Collider they would quickly break down.

When the LHC is finally at full power, two beams of protons will race around the huge ring 11,000 times a second in opposite directions. They will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space.

Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets — to guide the beams around the rings and prevent the packets of protons from cutting through the surrounding magnets like a blowtorch.

The paths of these beams will cross, and a few of the protons in them will collide, at a series of cylindrical detectors along the ring. The two largest detectors are essentially huge digital cameras, each weighing thousands of tons, capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.

Each year the detectors will generate 15 petabytes of data, the equivalent of a stack of CDs 12 miles tall. The data will require a high speed global network of computers for analysis.

Wagner and others filed a lawsuit to halt operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state in 1999. The courts dismissed the suit.

The leafy campus of CERN, a short drive from the shores of Lake Geneva, hardly seems like ground zero for doomsday. And locals don't seem overly concerned. Thousands attended an open house here this spring.

"There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans.

Thinking about our wedding

I don't mind this photo because my butt doesn't look alllll that big in it...
it looks at least average
and I guess I'm ok with that.
N snapped this photo on our way down to our spot


This one too

Here we are standing at the entrance to OUR path
which of course leads to OUR sacred spot!


N snapped this photo from our actual path..
it looks a lot the same on the other side of the little "bridge"
which is a part of our path.
This is IN our actual spot and is precisely
where Pop, Mom and Dad will be standing.
We were going to have them move the bench but I came to
find that it is cemented to the ground......
so we won't be moving the bench.
We will be standing right in front of it though with Vince
and N's life
long friend Abe
will be off to the left there and my Gramps and Helen
(if they are coming) off to the right.
You probably can't tell but
It's going to be SO GREAT!
You can't really see what the full area is like because this shot
is up close but this is what you
see when you walk straight into our spot from the little path.


N shot this when we were leaving.
He just looked up!

Reception Spot Picked


I think this is where we are going to have our wedding reception. I made the executive decision this morning about 10:00 am Central time and N approved it within moments thereafter.
What I like about it- aside from the price- (which come on! Is really important.)
is that it is nice and new and clean and it has a HUGE patio which runs the length of the building AND a dance floor. SO- excellent!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Do you ever?



When I was waiting in the drive through line at Hardee's this morning, I accidentally let my debit card slip off my lap to fall between the seat and the console in my car so that only the corner of the card was sticking up and I had to try and fish it out of there with the tips of my fingers which only proved to shove it further down and out of my reach.

So then I could see my debit card, but now it was flat against the carpet and in a skinny little narrow place which I couldn't comfortably jam my fingers into... I could jam them mind you, but not comfortably.

*&%#@!

When my card got stuck like that I thought to myself that I would just have to wait to get it out when I would be able to actually get out of the car, bend over and have a straight shot to fish it out from under the seat. It was in that moment I asked myself:

"What if this was a life and death situation and the only way I could save my life would be to get that debit card out, from this particular uncomfortable position I am now sitting in?"

Which is a question I tend to ask myself a lot in similarly unimportant situations and I have noticed that I started playing this game a lot with myself since I quit smoking.

This now evolved line of thinking helped me a lot to quit because in moments of distinct weakness my last question of myself was always:

"OK.... sooooooo what? Would I actually DIE if I couldn't have a cigarette?"

On the heels of which I would envision myself pitifully writhing in pain and agony over not having one- the thought of which, in turn, would cause my extremely prideful self to become outraged at the very idea of being so pitifully weak and mentally I would move on; without a cigarette.

I don't need to do that anymore, but at the time, I never would have imagined this way of thinking would have carried on anyway and I rather enjoy it. Today when I did I paused to wonder if other people play this same game with themselves?

In moments when I am ready to give up on a situation I picture myself in a cell or trapped in a chamber or some other ominous situation and I ask myself "What if my life depended on whether or not I could get this card, toothpick, key etc.?"

The answer is always that I would try a lot harder, be a lot more careful, do away with the thought that it could not happen, give up on the thought of getting frustrated, put away the thought that I can't or it can't be done because what is the alternative? It is my life!

It is also interesting to note the way it feels when I really do fail, when I accidentally shove the card too far out of reach with my pinky finger while I am trying to fish it out for example- when I fail and I have to acknowledge to myself that in that particular imaginary instance I was a goner....


Friday, June 20, 2008

A day in the life...

Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw Remove performer from this event
When Tim McGraw debuted in the early '90s, few would have predicted that he would eventually take over Garth Brooks' position as the most popular male singer in country music. Yet that's exactly what he did, thanks to a string of multi-platinum albums, a high-profile marriage to...
Jason Aldean
Jason Aldean Remove performer from this event
Country singer and guitarist Jason Aldean was born in Macon, GA, in 1977. His parents separated when he was three years old, and he spent his childhood with his mother in Macon through the school year while spending the summers with his father in Homestead, FL.
Halfway to Hazard
Halfway to Hazard Remove performer from this event
Halfway to Hazard is a rock-influenced country duo featuring Chad Warrix on vocals, guitar, and mandolin and David Tolliver on vocals and guitar. Warrix and Tolliver both grew up in small towns in southeastern Kentucky, and enjoyed remarkably similar lives -- they were raised in...

Tuesday Nicholas took he and I to yet another concert in the corporate suite at the Sprint Center! It was a very awesome show and I really enjoyed it! Especially Tim McGraw though. I did know and like a couple songs from Halfway to Hazard and Jason Aldean but it was Tim McGraw that I was excited to see int he first place and I was hoping all along I would get to hear my favorite song LIVE- and I did!

I was talking to a friend from work a few days ago while we were waiting for everyone to arrive for our morning stand up meeting. She had told me that she saw Mr. McGraw a couple of years ago. She said he was so upset over his brother being in Iraq that he spoke about him and the war for 45 minutes of his show and she was uber disappointed, but that wasn't my experience at all.

He shot right through the most recent songs, snuck in 3 or 4 new songs which were pretty cool and played several super important "oldie" favorites, saving my super duper oooper fav for his second to last song!

I was sooooooooo excited for him to sing it that I screamed and sprang from my seat and would probably have flapped my arms and clucked like a chicken too if it wasn't for the fact Nicholas' boss and his wife were right behind us.

Yes, I was that woman.

My song:
Artist: Tim McGraw
Song: "Somethin' Like That
Album:
[Buy this CD]

Complimentary RingtoneComplimentary “"Somethin' Like That” RingtoneComplimentary Ringtone

It was labor day weekend,
I was seventeen,
I bought a Coke and some gasoline;
And I drove out to the county fair.

When I saw her for the first time,
She was standin' there in the ticket line;
And it all started right then and there.

Oh the sailor sky made a perfect sunset,
And that's a day I'll never forget!

I had a barbeque stain on my white T-shirt,
She was killin' me in that mini-skirt;
Skipping rocks on the river by the railroad tracks.
She had a sun-tan line and red lipstick,
I worked so hard for that first kiss;
And a heart don't forget something like that.

Well, it was five years later on a south-bound plane,
I was headed down to New Orleans;
To meet some friends of mine for the Mardi Gras.

When I heard a voice from the past,
Comin' from a few rows back;
And when I looked,
I couldn't believe just what I saw.

She said, "I bet ya don't remember me."
And I said, "Only every other memory!"

I had a barbeque stain on my white T-shirt,
You were killin' me in that mini-skirt;
Skipping rocks on the river by the railroad tracks.
You had a sun-tan line and red lipstick,
I worked so hard for that first kiss;
And a heart don't forget something like that."

Like an old photograph,
Time can make a feeling fade;
But the mem'ry of the first love,
Never fades away!

I had a barbeque stain on my white T-shirt,
She was killin' me in that mini-skirt;
Skipping rocks on the river by the railroad tracks.
She had a sun-tan line and red lipstick,
I worked so hard for that first kiss;
And a heart don't forget,
No!
A heart don't forget,
I said!
A heart don't forget,
Somethin' like that!
Oh, now somethin' like that!

LOVE THAT SONG!!!

Also- I love this about Nicholas:
(Which I did tell him, but I will tell you too)

Nicholas does not love Tim McGraw.
No, he doesn't.
He loves Ben Folds, he loves Cold Play and he had fun but he didn't take me because he loves Tim McGraw tunes - it was because he loves me and thats why he signed us up for the tickets for this show and I didn't even really realize this fact until I watched him trying to mouth some of the words which he didn't really know to some of the songs which he also didn't really know and it struck me as a very very VERY sweet gesture from my incredibly beautiful and sweet man and it made me very happy that he can be so thoughtful and sweet and I really appreciated it- which I told him... but now I'm telling you too.

Lucky me!


Thursday, June 19, 2008

What I did today- hehe!

Marriage License Information


INSTRUCTIONS FOR OBTAINING A MARRIAGE LICENSE

Either person may make application for the marriage license. There is a THREE day waiting period, after application is made, before you may pick up the license.

Application made on:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Pick-up on:
Thursday or any business day after
Friday or any business day after
Monday or any business day after
Monday or any business day after
Monday or any business day after

Either person can pick up the license. The license will expire six months from date of issuance.

A worksheet is issued when the application is made. All information must be completed and returned when picking up the license. The worksheet must be signed by both parties

THE FEE FOR THE LICENSE IS $50 CASH ONLY. NO CHECKS!!!

After the marriage ceremony, the original license is returned to the Court for recording, then forwarded to the Department of Vital Statistics in Topeka, Kansas, where it is kept on permanent file. The duplicate is for the bride and groom. To obtain a certified copy of your marriage license you may apply to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, Topeka, Kansas, or to the Clerk of the District Court. Applications may be obtained in the Clerk of the District Court office.

License will be published in the local newspaper.

Note: Minors must be accompanied by parent or guardian, and application must be approved by the Judge.

If you have any questions, please contact the District Court office.
HOURS are Monday through Friday 8:00 am to 4:30 pm.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Dad's in Italy.....

Speaking entirely from a female prospective.... we are soooooooooooo lucky in this world, to have men who become incredible Father's! What a special and important thing!

A woman CANNOT be a Father, we can try, we can do it allllll, but we can't really do THAT- not while still being a woman and lets get real- you have to definitely stop being a woman to be a Father.

Even if a woman could really walk that walk, it still wouldn't matter that she could because children long for their Father, deep down in theirs hearts it's a love they long for exclusively. I watched it with my own children.

Is it the same for children with their Mom's? I suppose it may be.

I am super duper uber rooper dinkly doggly incredibly LUCKY to have a beautiful Father and to be so in love with a man who is such a great Daddy too!

It is SUCH a special thing to watch- a Father's relationships with his children and family is- it's such a special thing to be part of!

Good Father's are very very very important to our whole entire world they are the yang to our yin and truly a sweet blessing straight from God but an EXCELLENT BEAUTIFUL AND WONDERFUL Dad is simply music, to me.



Excerpt from Daughters: (John Mayer)
On behalf of every man
Looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world

So fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Our poodle loves me


<--- This is not a picture of our poodle but a close cousin. Our poodle's name is Merlot. We named her that over a glass of wine at my brothers house the day Nicholas bought her for us. Nicholas also thought of her name and it made sense when he did because she was brand new and her papers said she would be red. Whenver I tell folks her name I inevitably get a raised eyebrow as if I am such a lush that I would need to name my dog in honor of the beverage. Which isn't the case, but often makes me laugh at the unoriginal nature of some people that think their assumption is theirs alone.

Now that Merlot is fully grown it turns out that she isn't so red, but she is adorable and I like her name a lot anyhow. Nicholas often comments on how she is the perfect dog for us, and she is.

Anyway I know that she loves me because she really really loves to run.
LOVES it!
And last night we were outside doing our run/walk with Megan who had Merlot's leash and was running along in front of me and I didn't feel much like running so I was just walking along swiftly with Aerosmith humming in my ears and a nice breeze blowing my hair back- (Ilove how that feels) but Merlot kept stopping to wait for me.
She would start to run (remember she loves to run) and then errrrrrrrrp- she would put on the brakes because she loves me and she didn't want to leave me behind.
*smile*

Devotion.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Sweatin before I'm an oldie!

Oh my gosh...........


the computers at my place of employment have been SO out of whack with a completely jacked server problem for almost a month now, but they hit an all time low over t his past week and a half.


Miraculously today, when I logged on and tried to open various programs- after a bit of a pause they all popped right open!
It was a beautiful beautiful beautiful thing.


For the past month or so that the computers have been so messed up everyone at work has been talking about how we should have never stopped doing all the paperwork by hand
- yea right.

Whatever.



Last week I started working out.

Well, run/walking -
which means I half run and half walk a given distance.

Which, last week was 5 miles.

No not 5 miles a day-
(My aching ass wishes...)

5 miles the whole week.

I have committed to go 10 miles this week.

Which by the way, I read is an extremely good cardio vascular work out.

Walk 2 minutes and run 2 minutes.




Except that I am actually doing it by the block... or so... *shrug*

I got two miles under my belt tonight and am off to an excellent start with my goal for the week.

Wooot!