Higgs boson delivered by truck
WHAT led to the Large Hadron Collider’s confirmation in July of the existence of the Higgs boson (14 July, p 6)?
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The LHC straddles the French-Swiss border close to Geneva. Derek Christie writes in to tell us that people living near Geneva suspect that the mass-giving particle was, in fact, delivered by a local Swiss trucking company, Boson Transports.
To back up the theory, Derek points us to the company’s website – – and a photo of one of its lorries ().
“If CERN physicists had known of the existence of this trucking company,” Derek says, “no doubt they would have ordered their Higgs boson earlier.”
An electric fan made by Honeywell that Erik Foxcroft saw in a shop display had a notice claiming in large letters: “25 per cent more silent”
Information with built-in obsolescence
WHEN Jonathan Chard applied for a Halifax Clarity Credit Card, he gave the small print a careful read – the result, he says, of “one too many bad experiences at the hands of a troubled financial industry”.
In particular, he checked the “pre-contract credit information”. This “seemed reasonable, if predictably dull” – until, in section 4, which was entitled “Other important legal aspects”, he came across the statement: “This information is valid until the end of the day on which it is provided to you.”
Jonathan was reading the information the day after it had arrived and realised he had wasted his time reading something that was already invalid. But then, he thought, the statement about the invalidity of the information was also invalid, in which case…
Jonathan sent us a pdf of the document, for which we thank him. Without it we would find what he says hard to believe.
READER George Waters was one of several who were surprised by in the June issue of Scientific Computing headlined: “Immune System Glitch Tied to Fourfold Higher Likelihood of Death.”
The article begins: “Mayo Clinic researchers have identified an immune system deficiency whose presence shows someone is up to four times likelier to die than a person without it.”
“Before I read this,” George comments, “I thought my chances of dying were 100 per cent.”
Meanwhile, reader Targ Parsons was equally puzzled by Australia with the headline: “A new study suggests that people who drink coffee are less likely to die.”
Feedback agrees that these statements are surprising, if not nonsensical. At the risk of stating the obvious, we note that what’s missing from them is the time factor. The Mayo Clinic article, for example, should have made it clear that people with the reported immune system deficiency have a four-fold higher risk of dying within a certain time period, which they neglected to specify.
Journalists, take care not to make your readers think they are immortal.
PROMPTED by a couple of readers telling us a Higgs boson joke that we had already heard, we promised to “preserve this joke for posterity, since as far as we know no national libraries have on the shelves” (21 July). It turns out that “as far as we know” wasn’t far enough.
Gerard Davison points us to the of the donation of the entire Twitter feed up to 14 April 2010 to the US Library of Congress also noted by Christopher Woodford in 91av (Letters, 25 August, p 32). The Library’s announcement refers to further donations, and points to a particularly useful document, ““.
However, as far as we can tell – which may again not be far enough – details of access by researchers are still being worked out.
Whether or not the “An” in that title is correct, given that “FAQ” is plural, generated more discussion on Twitter than the donation itself. Several commentators salute the donation but mirror Gerard’s observation that “the information content [of the Twitter archive] is another matter”.
PEOPLE differ in what they consider to be fun. A colleague in the US was reminded of this when he received an email from Mindi Sue at Smith Publicity.
The email, headlined “Fun Summer Read”, promoted a book by Auguste Dinoto called Dark Dawning: What would happen if an earthquake destroyed the world’s oil supply?
It went on: “A great book that takes the imagination to a fun place. What would you do if 85 per cent of the world’s oil supply was all of a sudden gone? Would freedoms be lost in this country with the total loss of gasoline? Would people start rioting?”
All such good fun. But then again, perhaps not.
FINALLY, the scrolling information board of a Southeastern train that Anthony Daniel was travelling on in southern England counselled him: “Please ensure you are travelling in the correct portion of the train. This is coach No.9 out of 8.”