"During the years 1962 to 1964 a debate developed about whether the Goldstone theorem could be evaded. Anderson pointed out that in a superconductor the Goldstone mode becomes a massive plasmon mode due to its electromagnetic interaction, and that this mode is just the longitudinal partner of transversely polarized electromagnetic modes, which also are massive (the Meissner effect!). Ths was the first description of what has become known as the Higgs mechanism.

A couple of days ago, I read this on Real Clear Science:

Why Spelling Tests Don’t Help Kids Spell by Misty Adoniou

I highly recommend this short article, but I would like to pick out one sentence:

Nor is getting children to write their spelling words out 10 times, even if they have to do it in rainbow colours.

Inspired by my friend Peter Woit's openness in discussing his work in progress (a thick textbook on the foundations of quantum mechanics), I feel compelled to come out here about my own project.

I'm speaking of bare particles. "Heroes" is maybe too pathetic, but blocks or "bricks" would be OK since everything is made of them despite their being non-observable. Why are they non-observable? Because they are non-interacting particles or particles "before interaction". Inaccessible, for short.

We've highlighted in the past some interesting activity from DARPA (read more via Neuron News from Dynamic Patterns Research) with its involvement in neurological research and technology developments.

Just a quick link to allow you to browse a very nice set of pictures taken at CERN by Andri Pol. The subjects are physicists in their daily activities - brainstorming at the blackboard, cycling around the lab, bitching about the mess in the common coffee room, or working at various pieces of hardware:
you can see them here. Enjoy!

"We haven't the foggiest idea what drives the new high-temperature superconductors, or what makes a snowflake, or how the mind or the economy works. What is more, nothing high energy physics can do will ever be of the slightest direct help in solving these overwhelmingly hard problems"

Philip Anderson, The Case Against the SSC, 1987
(Anderson was one of the theorists who are credited for discovering the "Higgs mechanism" in the early 1960s. He is a 1977 Nobel laureate in Physics for his studies of the electron structure of magnetic systems)

Twenty years before the Pilgrims, the first events which could be called thanksgiving days in the history of English speaking America occurred in Virginia in the early 1600's.

It has taken 19.5 years to Italy to sanate a wound to its democratic fabric, one which made the country look like a sort of Banana republic, where a tycoon could acquire consensus through his mediatic power, rule unchallenged, and break the law without punishment. But finally we got around it yesterday afternoon, where a vote of the Senate of Republic has decreed that Silvio Berlusconi is unfit to hold a seat in the Parliament.

Google money magic can only take you so far with the federal government. 

23andMe, the highest profile genetic testing company, co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has gotten a warning letter from the FDA. The problem? They don't disclose how accurate they are, but they claim all kinds of awareness benefits that make them look a lot like a medical device.