Killing your own grandfather before you're born

Now this is interesting...

It seems that there are a few physicists out there who are advancing a theory that the CERN supercollider will once again fail -- because it must. Y'see, the Higgs boson, which the supercollider is designed to eventually produce and study, "might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it [can] make one."

Talk about your time travel paradoxes...

The proponents of the theory, Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, argue that this may also be why, after billions of dollars spent in development, the US Superconducting Supercollider was scrapped in 1993 -- its own future reached back into the past and shut down the funding.

The CERN supercollider is scheduled to resume operations at the end of this year after its magnet meltdown back in 2008. So maybe we'll find out that this theory is wrong when CERN works flawlessly and begins to produce collisions and results. Or will it?

There must be an sf story in there somewhere. :-)

Toast! wins award -- for the locals

In Stockholm today, the No (cow)Bell Committee awarded the No (cow)Bell Award for Cover Bands to TOAST! The No (cow)Bell Award is awarded each year to the band that the Committee feels most exemplifies the attributes of the ideal cover band. In their statement to the press, the Committee cited Tom Steele's unflinching devotion to James Taylor, Rick Hagee's extraordinary ability to add church hymns in the middle of any song, Steve Leigh's strong advocacy of the bass as the dominant instrument in the mix, Steve Gallant's willingness to admit that feedback is always caused by the sax mic, Tom Vogel's creative ways to hold drumsticks when his hands hurt, and the loudness of Dale Lewis' shoes (but not his guitar).

In addition, the Committee said: "There are not many bands who have played the songs that they play as many times as they have, and yet who can still manage to make unusual and different mistakes in them. That is true genius!"

Indeed! And if you'd like to hear true genius for yourself, you can do so this Friday, October 16th, 8:30-12:30 at the Silverton Café, 7201 Montgomery Road (http://www.silvertoncafe.com/ ). Toast is, in the words of the Committee, "a national treasure which should always stay in their own nation. Please. We don't want them over here."

The No (cow)bell Award carries with it a prize of 24 pence and a broken drumstick. Tom Vogel has already received the actual award, and we will let some (un)lucky person use the award this Friday when we play "My Old School." It could be YOU!

So -- why don't you make plans to come out to the Silverton Cafe this Friday night and see the most talked-about band in minutes? TOAST! An international award-winning act!

Next year, we're going after the Noblesse Oblige award!

TOAST! is Steve Leigh, Rick Hagee, Steve Gallant, Tom Vogel, Dale Lewis and Tom Steele.