RANDOM NOTHINGNESS

Typhoon Ramil [Lupit]  as of 10/18/09

[Translation:  Typhoon RAMIL is akin to a jilted lover who cannot move on.]



Projections as of 10/20/09

From what I heard in the news today,  Typhoon Ramil is projected to do it's landfall on Monday, October 22...  As we all know, news on the approach of Typhoon Ramil has be around since last week.  He's been in the vicinity for quite sometime now and he is threatening to release his wrath on Northern Luzon... barely two weeks after the lingering of Typhoon Pepeng also in the area.  By the way, I liken Pepeng [international name: Parma] to an undecided lover (comes and goes as he pleases, because he doesn't know what he wants in the relationship, all this time still expecting his lover to welcome him with open arms).

Anyway, enough introduction.  Here is my letter to Ramil:

Dear Ramil,

Please move on... I know you have great wrath stored inside you, I know you've been harboring these feelings for some time now.  But please, for the sake of others, move on.  It would even be better if you just let go of at least a bit of the bitterness you have before you move on.  You and all the other affected people will have a better life when you do this, believe me.  Stop doing this.  You are only hurting yourself and those around you.

Seriously, just move on.

Yours,

Randomnizer

[Warning: Nerd Alert!]

The Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) operations halted in September 19, 2009 (just a little over one week after proton beams were successfully circulated in its main ring for the first time in September 10, 2009) due to a serious fault between two superconducting magnets.  Electrical problems in the bus between two magnets caused parts of the superconducting coils to enter into a normal (resistive) state, causing that spot and the surrounding area to heat up, thereby pushing these other areas into normal states, too .  This process is accompanied by a loud bang as the energy of the magnetic field is converted to heat, vaporising  massive amounts of liquid helium and damaging 53 magnets.  The magnets had to be repaired or replaced and the affected 8 sectors warmed up and then cooled down again before the LHC becomes operational again.

It has been more than a year and now, the LHC is on it's final cooling stage (see CERN Bulletin released 10/05/2009 here)! Just one more week of cooling down and then operations will resume on mid-November! Yey!

If all goes well, key physics questions about the Higgs boson, the Grand Unification Theory, gravity, sypersymmetry, quarks, antimatter, dark matter and extra dimensions in string theory might be answered.  Cool!

Upon logging into the internet today, I was shocked by one of the headlines in Yahoo News Philippines:

Bodies Float in Flooded Botolan Cemetery

Bodies from the Botolan Municipal Cemeteries in Barangay Paco, Botolan, Zambales were disturbed from their restful state when waters from the Bucao River overflowed and flooded the area.  Some 200 caskets and bodies were seen floating on floodwaters, shocking and devastating residents.