Just a quick post, and nothing more.
Well, now it seems the folks over at CERN and the LHC have gathered some evidence that the elusive Higgs boson might exist after all (read LHC: Higgs boson 'may have been glimpsed'). I should note right away that if they do find the thing, they actually won't "see" the particle itself. The best evidence will only show the particle's properties if it exists. It'll leave its "signature", as it were: Higgs boson was here. Right now the evidence is quite slim, for the likelihood the statistical evidence is correct isn't as high as one would like. But goodness gracious, it all looks like a lot of fun right now for particle physicists and science nerds in general! A couple months ago, it looked like the Standard Model was doomed, as well as String Theory, but now the ship has righted itself and might be sailing into brave new waters after all...
On another topic, I recently watched the documentary Up The Yangtze. Unlike some other docs, this one had minimal narration by the director, just letting the landscape and people themselves do the talking. And the approach is quite apt, since the documentary's broader topic is how certain regions (and a culture itself) were affected in various ways by an industrializing China. The immense Three Gorges Dam in China irrevocably changed some of the surrounding landscape near the Yangtze river, displacing large numbers of citizens along its edges. Here, the doc focuses in on a family who has no choice but to move further inland where there won't be immense flooding. It's quite something to see a modern industrial revolution played out in such a short span as it's happening in China, where its agrarian sections meet consumer capitalism in almost the blink of an eye. You get a glimpse of how far "Westernized" ideas and methods have spanned the globe, even to the point of how the local Chinese workers on that tourist cruise-ship were to adopt English nicknames at work. It's quite an affecting documentary, but never preachy. It just presents an event, and lets the viewer watch it flow forth.
