Eideard

Josef Kristofoletti’s painting of what a Higgs boson may look like
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

“We don’t call it the ‘God particle’, it’s just the media that do that,” a senior U.S. scientist politely told an interviewer on a major European radio station on Tuesday.

“Well, I am the from the media and I’m going to continue calling it that,” said the journalist – and continued to do so.

The exchange, as physicists at the CERN research centre near Geneva were preparing to announce the latest news from their long and frustrating search for the Higgs boson, illustrated sharply how science and the popular media are not always a good mix.

“I hate that ‘God particle’ term,” said Pauline Gagnon, a Canadian member of CERN’s ATLAS team of so-called “Higgs hunters” – an epithet they do not reject.

“The Higgs is not endowed with any religious meaning. It is ridiculous to call it that,” she told Reuters at a news conference after her colleagues revealed growing evidence, albeit not yet proof, of the particle’s existence…

The Higgs boson is being hunted so determinedly because it would be the manifestation of an invisible field – the Higgs field – thought to permeate the entire universe.

The field was posited in the 1960s by British scientist Peter Higgs as the way that matter obtained mass after the universe was created in the Big Bang. As such, according to the theory, it was the agent that made the stars, planets – and life – possible by giving mass to most elementary particles, the building blocks of the universe; hence the nickname “God particle…”

According to people who have investigated the subject, the term originated with a 1993 history of particle physics by U.S. Nobel prize winner Leon M Lederman.

The book was titled: “The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?”

Physicists say Lederman, who over the years has been the target of much opprobrium from his scientific colleagues, tells friends he wanted to call the book “The Goddamned Particle” to reflect frustration at the failure to find it.

But, according to that account, his publisher rejected the epithet – possibly because of its potential to upset a strongly religious U.S. public – and convinced Lederman to accept the alternative he proposed.

No surprise at any level. The absurd enthusiasm for religious excuses for any sort of behavior are part and parcel of life in these United States – including the bigots who still would split the nation to reform the Confederacy, “God’s Country” for many of them.

Still, the old established denominations diminish at a steady pace. Losers remaining, thrashing about for explanations to justify their idealized loyalty to superstition move those remnants further into fundamentalism, trying to justify allegiance to failed explanations – when reality and science are simple enough, easy enough.

Karen Matthews, AP reporter, arrested by NYC coppers
Photo by AP photographer Seth Wenig, also arrested

Associated Press has reprimanded some of its journalists for breaking news on Twitter before posting it on the wires.

The news agency issued the warning after some staff members tweeted that AP journalists had been arrested at the Occupy Wall Street camp in Manhattan. An email from bosses followed reminding staff about AP’s social media policies…

While Twitter is an invaluable tool in newsrooms around the world, it has also forced news organisations, including AP, to draw up strict rules.

“If you have a piece of information, a photo or a video that is compelling, exclusive and/or urgent enough to be considered breaking news, you should file it to the wire, and photo and video points before you consider putting it out on social media,” the AP policy reads.

After the recent incident in New York, AP’s managing editor Lou Ferrara wrote an email to employees explaining that their first duty was to the agency not Twitter.

And executive editor Kathleen Carroll issued a memo saying much of the resulting “chatter” had missed the point.

“When we lose contact with a journalist, our main focus is making sure they are safe, no matter where they are. Sometimes, talking about it while things are still uncertain can endanger them,” she said.

“It’s not outlandish to think that a tweet that’s taken by someone in authority to be opinionated or sarcastic could lead to one of our staffers being held longer than necessary…”

But Anthony de Rosa, social media editor at Reuters, thinks that such policies may need to be overhauled. He tweeted: “News agencies must evolve or face extinction.”

He expanded the point in his official Reuters blog.

“The wire is still a huge part of our business and always will be. However, acting in a way that handcuffs us from doing our best work on Reuters.com and on social networks, which help drive traffic and extend our brand, is writing a death sentence for us as a future media company.

“To bury our head in the sand and act like Twitter (and who knows what else comes into existence next month or five years from now?) isn’t increasingly becoming the source of what informs people in real-time is ridiculous,” he wrote.

RTFA – the discussion moves in a few directions not the least of which is hoax tweets – which are generally reprehensible.

New Zealand police arrested and strip searched a black South African rugby journalist drinking with white colleagues in a pub because he “fitted the profile of a drug dealer”.

Vata Ngobeni, who works for the Pretoria News newspaper and acts as an analyst for South Africa’s national broadcaster SABC, was arrested in the early hours of Monday morning and taken to a police station where he was strip searched.

When he tried to explain that he was a journalist on tour covering the Springboks’s performance in the Rugby World Cup, which New Zealand is hosting, he was told they were following standard procedure when they spot someone who fits “the profile of a drug dealer”.

Colleagues in the bar with him confirmed he was the only black person present.

“I have never been so embarrassed in my life,” he told a South African newspaper after being released. “I have never experienced this kind of treatment in all my travels around the world, so to be singled out as a common criminal in front of so many people is something I will never forget.”

Here in the United States we have so many politicians and populist pimps rationalizing away the possible effects of police profiling – we tend to forget that other nations from Israel to New Zealand have already established such foolishness as standard operating procedures.

Some are on their way out of official racism – which I hope would be the case in New Zealand – while others like Israel are baking institutionalized bigotry into daily life.

Veteran journalist Mark Haines, a fixture on CNBC for 22 years, died unexpectedly Tuesday evening. He was 65 years old.

Haines, founding anchor of CNBC’s morning show “Squawk Box,” was co-anchor of the network’s “Squawk on the Street” program, providing insight and commentary sometimes humorous and occasionally acerbic.

CNBC President Mark Hoffman called Haines a “building block” of the financial network’s programming. Hoffman said Haines died at his home. “With his searing wit, profound insight and piercing interview style, he was a constant and trusted presence in business news for more than 20 years,” Hoffman said in a statement to CNBC employees. “From the dotcom bubble to the tragic events of 9/11 to the depths of the financial crisis, Mark was always the unflappable pro.

“Mark loved CNBC and we loved him back. He will be deeply missed.”

Haines may be best remembered for his calming and commanding presence during the 9/11 tragedy when he reacted unflappably to the furious stream of incoming rumor and even more astonishing truth with a professionalism that rivaled any television anchor, said CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman…

Haines served as a news anchor for KYW-TV in Philadelphia, WABC-TV in New York, and WPRI-TV in Providence, before joining CNBC.

Haines held a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and was a member of the New Jersey State Bar. In 2000, he was named to Brill’s Content’s “Influence List.”

His death quickly reverberated through the financial community…

Traders at the normally bustling New York Stock Exchange paused for a moment of silence…

Haines was known for a lawyer-like determination to get at the truth, pressing guests for answers if they tried to avoid his pointed questions. CNBC reporters and anchors remembered Haines holding them up to the same standard…

I’m an old fart who didn’t get serious about investing till this last Great Recession pissed me off. Between incompetent mutual fund managers and the ever-increasing blather of “news” channels – I found myself watching the two professional financial channels to see what was going on in the real world.

Tears fill our eyes, sadness our hearts. He will be missed.

Protesting a security demand that an al-Jazeera producer remove her bra, fellow colleagues bowed out of a meeting with Israel’s prime minister.

Israeli security personnel screening those attending the annual foreign correspondents event in Jerusalem Tuesday, asked al-Jazeera producer Simri Diab, 31, to remove her bra. She refused and was not permitted to enter the hall where Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was due to speak, Ynetnews.com said Wednesday.

Diab told Ynetnews three reporters from the station planned to attend the event. She said she was forced to wait for a long period in the queue and then singled out with other Arab reporters. One of the security guards allowed her to sit down because of she is pregnant. She later agreed to a body search in a holding room downstairs, she said.

“They later took me downstairs to the security check cell. They asked me to take off my coat and then my vest. I did. Then they asked me to take off my shirt. I took a deep breath and did it. I was left with just my undershirt and trousers, without my shoes and the rest of my equipment. The female officer felt me with her hands for 15 minutes in any place possible. I told her I was pregnant and asked her not to use the manual device, but compromised on that later too.” When later asked to remove her bra, she said she refused and was told she would not be permitted to attend…

Yes, this goes beyond the usual depths of paranoia and political dementia that infects the actions of self-important pimps of national security, TSA, Shin Bet or otherwise. But, then, there’s probably a race to the bottom between Israel and the United States over who can produce the greatest number of bigoted incidents per month.

Neither nation produces any justification greater than “people hate us” – without ever examining the larger question of “Why does everyone hate us?”

A woman has been arrested over allegations that she murdered her pregnant journalist daughter for falling in love with a boy from a lower caste.

Nirupama Pathak, 22, who worked for the Business Standard, a leading financial newspaper in Delhi, was found dead last week at her family home in the northern state of Jharkhand.

Her mother, Sudha Devi, was arrested yesterday.

“There are indications that family pride was the prime motive behind the murder,” a police spokesman told reporters.

Nirupama’s family are Brahmins, who are at the top of India’s caste hierarchy. She is understood to have agreed to marry her college sweetheart, Priyabhanshu Ranjan, another journalist, who reportedly comes from the lower Kayastha caste…

Police said their suspicions were raised when the mother gave conflicting explanations for her daughter’s death, first claiming that Nirupama had been electrocuted then stating that she had committed suicide by hanging herself from a ceiling fan…

Honour killings are not rare in India, but cases involving middle-class families seldom come to court.

“If the charge sticks, it will be a rare case in which an educated middle-class woman will face trial for murdering her own daughter,” the Indian Express newspaper said.

Overdue.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

“The most trusted man in America” has died, Age 92.

He will be sorely missed.

An Iraqi town has unveiled a giant monument of a shoe in honor of the journalist who threw his footwear at former U.S. President George W. Bush.

The two-meter (six-foot) high statue, unveiled Thursday in former dictator Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit, depicts a bronze-colored shoe, filled with a plastic shrub. “Muntazer: fasting until the sword breaks its fast with blood; silent until our mouths speak the truth,” reads an inscription, in honor of journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who hurled his shoes at Bush and called him a “dog” at a news conference during the former president’s final visit to Iraq.

Zaidi has been held in jail in Baghdad since the incident, facing charges of assaulting a visiting head of state.

Fatin Abdul Qader, head of an orphanage and children’s organization in the town, said the one-and-a-half-ton monument by artist Laith al-Amiri was titled “statue of glory and generosity.”

“This statue is the least expression of our appreciation for Muntazer al-Zaidi, because Iraqi hearts were comforted by his throw,” she said.

UPDATED: Well, take a good look at it. Local politicians ordered the sculpture taken down and destroyed. So much for artistic freedom in the “New” Iraq.

Demonstrators carry shoes in support of al-Zaidi
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

An Egyptian man said on Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday,

The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. “This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero,” she told Reuters by telephone.

Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi’s brother, to tell him of the offer. “I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage,” he added.

Zaidi’s gesture has struck a chord across the Arab world, where President Bush is widely despised for invading Iraq in 2003 and for his support for Israel.

Zaidi’s response to the offer isn’t known. He hasn’t been allowed access to the press or public since his protest.

BTW – Security forces destroyed his shoes just in case they were ready to explode.

Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference. Crowds gathered in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, calling for “hero” Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

Officials at the Iraqi-owned TV station, al-Baghdadiya, called for the release of their journalist, saying he was exercising freedom of expression…

A statement released by the government said Mr Zaidi’s actions, which also included him shouting insults at President Bush, “harmed the reputation of Iraqi journalists and Iraqi journalism in general”…

The shoes missed as Mr Bush ducked, and Mr Zaidi was immediately wrestled to the ground by security guards and frogmarched from the room.

“This is a farewell kiss, you dog,” he yelled in Arabic as he threw his shoes. “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

I find the event hilarious in so many ways – ranging from the sloth and incompetence of the Secret Service, Bush’s what-me-worry nonchalance, the outrage of rightwing talking heads who never utter a peep about protecting the lives of Iraqis – to all the “news” directors who repeat the video to the delight of most of the world while covering their slack butts with demur notes about covering all the news. Chickenshit as ever.