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This article from the New York Times explores the grounds of a lawsuit recently filed by two physicists in federal court seeking to stop CERN from using its new $8 billion particle accelerator. The question: are crazy physicists in Switzerland unwittingly constructing a doomsday machine that will tear apart the fabric of our universe, creating a black hole that will eat the earth? The article is paraphrased in brief below:

Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.

But Mr. Wagner and Mr. Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”

Physicists in and out of CERN say a variety of studies, including an official CERN report in 2003, have concluded there is no problem. But just to be sure, last year the anonymous Safety Assessment Group was set up to do the review again.

“The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a threat to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots,” said Michelangelo Mangano, a CERN theorist who said he was part of the group.

The new worries are about black holes, which, according to some variants of string theory, could appear at the collider. According to a paper by the cosmologist Stephen Hawking in 1974, they would rapidly evaporate in a poof of radiation and elementary particles, and thus pose no threat. No one, though, has seen a black hole evaporate.

Mr. Wagner and Mr. Sancho contend in their complaint, black holes could really be stable, and a micro black hole created by the collider could grow, eventually swallowing the Earth.

Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”

I just got a call from a headhunter — completely out of the blue — and it reaffirmed everything I’ve come to realize about the way the world views engineers and technical professionals.

I decided to go along with the questioning from this aggressive young girl out of equal parts curiosity and courtesy — after all, she had called a week ago and left me a message that was never returned, so I figured I owed her five minutes of my time. She immediately asked me about my technical experience, even though it became plain to me that she didn’t have any technical knowledge and didn’t understand any of what I told her. She must have been working off of a checklist as I spoke, marking every buzzword that she recognized on her worksheet.

Apparently I must have said enough of these magic words to pass on to tier two questioning. Do I work in Unix or Windows? Do I do hyper-threading? Do I use data structures? Is my work in real-time? After a few of these questions, I tried to explain to her that she was asking me software engineering questions, and I’d already told her this wasn’t what I did. But again, she didn’t know what any of this meant anyhow. She simply wanted yes or no answers to mark on page two of her worksheet. So here were my answers: “no, no, no.”

“Alright, thank you, but we’re really looking for someone who has more Unix and hyper-threading experience. I’ll pass your resume along to one of my colleges to be considered for other positions.”

I suddenly felt defeated and dejected — at least until I realized that I had just been turned down for a position I didn’t want by someone who didn’t have a clue what a data structure was in the first place. Then I just felt annoyed.

I’ve come to realize that most of the world views engineers as these things that come with specified skill sets. But guess what: engineers are people too! We are not just these things that churn out generic computer code. Just because two engineers both know Java does not make them equal! Languages can be learned! Success is transferable! Past success in one area *can* be used as an indicator of future success in another area! I am more than the sum of my skills!!!

I get the feeling that many businesses just don’t know what to make of technical people. They don’t understand what we do, so they break us down into these skill sets — something that they can understand and work with. In the process we lose a little bit of our humanity.

I don’t ever want to work for a company like that. And so the next time I get asked about hyper-threading by a girl who couldn’t even begin to understand what hyper-threading means, I will politely ask her to stop asking me questions and quickly end the conversation.

This blog of Photoshop slip-ups in commercial print is one of my new favorite sites!

Kitty Wigs; the name says it all. Rates very high on the cute and odd meters. From the woman who brought the world Subversive Cross Stitch. (via kottke)

This recent photo of CitiField shows that the new stadium is quickly taking shape, and looking mighty fine I might add.

Mai and I wanted to get away from the cold and dreary February weather in Connecticut, so we took a short trip to the Bahamas! We got sun, warm weather, a cool ocean breeze and endless turquoise blue water; what more could we ask for?!
Check out the photos from our trip!

It’s been about 30 days since I relaunched GreenStrat (actually, 30 days since I started collecting data with Google Analytics) so I thought I’d take a look at how things are going so far.

First the numbers:

In the first 30 days, GreenStrat has averaged about 22 visits per day, and 73 pageviews. That works out to 2,267 pageviews for the month, and 3.28 pageviews per visit. Visitors spent an averge of just over 4 minutes on the site. So far I’ve generated 26 individual pages of content, 7 of which are songs that include videos and tabs (these pages are the heart of the site). Advertising revenue through Google Adsense has been negligable.

The numbers are not overwhelming and I have not yet seen a positive trend in visits over the past 30 days; so far the number of visits GreenStrat received has remained fairly steady. Of course, it’s still incredibly early to be judging the success of the site. Of my time spent with the site over this period, most has been devoted to back-end development (I’ve tried to dedicate about an hour a day to this development). So GreenStrat is still very much a work in progress. I’m adding features and content as quickly as I can churn them out. GreenStrat is now just beginning to resemble the site that I envision in my mind.

Although traffic has been slim, I’m heartened by the fact that I’ve put very little effort into promoting the site — instead dedicating my time to development in these early stages. The only promotion I’ve done is this plug on the site 43things.com. Interestingly, this single link has generated over 30% of the visits to GreenStrat over the first 30 days.

Work will continue steadily over the next 30 days, when I’ll revisit my progress and see how things are going then. Ultimately I’m still really excited about the site and as long as I can keep that excitement, I figure GreenStrat has got a good chance of success.

Now go check out GreenStrat!

Food was eaten. Guitar Hero was played. Good times were had. Another successful Hunter Mountain ski trip!!!
Check out the photos!>>

I thought this photo was hillarious. It’s a picture of the dog restroom that was set up in the basement of the Hotel Pennsylvania while the hotel hosted the Westminster Dog Show this past weekend. (from the New York Times)

This video demonstrating the latest in prosthetic arm technology absolutely blew my mind. I literally had to remind myself that what I was seeing was real and not CGI from a new sci-fi movie. It’s absolutely incredible technology from the inventor of the Segway. (via engadget).