My blogging partner David Leffler thinks the world will end this summer.
Every0ne else, at least those who believe that Mayan "Long Count" calendar will reach the end of its 5,126-year cycle in four more years, says otherwise. Unless, of course, the thirteen magic crystal skulls are reunited, which just happens to be the theme of the Indiana Jones film "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," set for release in a matter of days.
How many American plaintiff's lawyers wish they could legitimately use the threat of jail to encourage defendants in civil cases? This nasty trick happens here in Mexico, reports Business Insurance.
It might spell tweaking most U.S. jurisdiction's ethics rules, but it could be one way to easing congested dockets. But would you really want to go there?
The per capita consumption of Jell-O™ in Mexico has to exceed Utah, where it reigns as the official state snack. In Mexico, it’s a basic food group. Entire aisles of the supermarket may be devoted to feeding the national fetish. Mexico has taken flavored gelatin beyond the usual scope of fruit flavors to include sherry, eggnog, vanilla, pecan, chocolate, anise, red currant, tamarind, green apple and mango.
It's not just for sick people and children. Well-traveled and even the rare Mexicans who actually read books have been known to wax eloquently about gelatinas they have known. There are even magazines devoted entirely to making gelatin desserts. It's gone far beyond Perfection Salad.
Its incarnations range from gelatinas served up in plastic cups by street vendors to layered versions with stuff floating in it. Mexicans don’t stop at making gelatina with water; adding milk to it makes an opaque version all the better to disguise floaters.
Mexico City Gelatin artist Lourdes Reyes Rosas, the high priestess of three-dimensional gelatin art, has trained thousands in the art internationally, bringing the art and science of creating gelatin cakes filled with realistic gelatin flowers to all levels of Mexican society. There’s nothing that will impress a group of friends than an elegantly presented gelatin creation. Reyes Rosas says “besides being a form of emotional therapy, [it] may be a source for an income and profitable business.”
Yes, we consider gelatina just as good as psychotherapy and anti-depressants in this country.
Back in the 80's, we had to make do with Lisa Birnbach's Official Preppy Handbook, Marissa Piesman's The Yuppie Handbook, and Anna Sequoia’s The Official J.A.P. Handbook. And then there was Paul Fussell’s Class: Style and Status in the USA, followed by David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise and On Paradise Drive.
Stuff White People Like is this year's answer to all of that, and it's spawned even more:
Stuff Educated Black People Like
Stuff Jewish Young Adults Like
Stuff Stick Figure People Like
Stuff English-Speaking Foreigners Living in San Miguel de Allende Like
and then, Stuff God Hates.
I'm waiting for Stuff Mexicans Like. You know, our affection for tight clothing, gelatina, pizza Hawaiiana, spike heels and pointed-toe shoes, dyeing our hair as the national hobby, hog dogs used as condiments, learning English, futbol (which Estadounidenses keep referring to as "soccer"), el shopping, mustaches, foreigners with money, name brands, telenovelas, and exiling our ex-presidents.
Have I forgotten anyone?
After all these years living in Mexico, you'd think I'd remember when Dia de las Madres is. Here is always happens on the same day of the year -- May 10. The newspaper reminds me of the Mother's Day sales and restaurant specials, and I usually manage to snag one of those free gifts of flowers and candy that merchants hand out to all women, but there's one constant which never fails to catch me by pleasant surprise.
Last night after going to bed around 1:30 a.m., hoping not to repeat the previous night's nightmare of sleeping with Al Gore, I directly went to dreamland, only to hear choruses of dulcet voices. In my neighborhood, the only noises at this hour are the usual cohetes, gunshot, bone-shattering music, and the signoff song du jour, Led Zepplin's Immigrant Song (We came from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.) Sweet music is a rare occurrence in my part of town.
This year I connected the noise with the date, grabbed some clothes and a camera with a dead battery and went to the street. A dozen men, beer bottles in hand, had moved the serenade from the house across the street to the corner, singing away with amazing sincerity and talent to four generations of mothers at the pozole lady's house. They would soon move on to another house, and yet another, before heading across town, hitting the homes of all the womenkind in their world.
It is 10 a.m., and Las Mañanitas rings out down the block. Before long, the mariachis will make their rounds, showing up for an hour here, an hour there, to perform for mothers who've slaved away over hot stoves preparing a festive meal for their families. For what the mariachis charge for house calls, the entire family could be feted at one of the city's best restaurants. But the neighbors wouldn't be as impressed.
Sweet music is always a pleasant way to start the day.
Jim Karger was a big-time gonzo labor lawyer in Dallas. Since 2001, he's lived in San Miguelde Allende, going from doing nothing to tackling the big-picture issues of transforming workplaces and lives.
In his spare time, he writes a column from time to time for Atencion San Miguel, the English-language weekly that tells people living in San Miguel what to do with their lives.
His May 2, 2008 column in Atencion explains what keeps him rooted in this central Mexican town when other expatriates toss in the towel. We've reprinted it in its entirety here, because it's too damned hard to find among Atencion's archives later.
Business, Real Estate and Investing
By Jim Karger May 2, 2008 San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel: The Golden Handcuffs
Why do I stay in San Miguel? Why do you stay? Have you ever asked yourself that question?
In the six and a half years I’ve been here I’ve thought of leaving at least once a day, sometimes more often, depending on how many times I have to find a parking place in Centro.
After all, all signs point to the US. Our six children live there. My work is often there. It is far easier to travel to Singapore and London from LA and New York than from León.
Of course, the weather is nice in San Miguel most of the time, but the weather is nice most of the time in San Diego, too.
The traffic can be rough in Los Angeles to be sure, but have you spent any time in a car on Ancha de San Antonio at 8am on a weekday? If you live and work in Redondo Beach you’re never really in the traffic except for the 15-minute drive to LAX. That’s different from the 4:30am run to Silao to catch the 6:55am Continental flight to Houston.
There is the art community here. A good point but I’m not a part of it. Indeed, I may be the only non-artist in San Miguel, or better said, the only person who openly admits to not to being an artist.
There is also the vaunted culture—you know this place where everyone says, “Buenos días!” That wears off after a while and would be easily traded by most for simple competence which is harder to find than a hearty “good morning!”
There are good restaurants in San Miguel, no doubt, but nothing of the caliber one can find in New York, Chicago, Paris, or any significant city in the US or Europe.
Entertainment here is a nonstarter. Indeed, there’s never been an act that has come to San Miguel I’ve ever heard of before I read about them in this newspaper. For sure, the Eagles aren’t coming anytime soon.
What about the cool people who migrate to San Miguel? There are some, to be sure, but I have found some flakes, too (or better said they found me)—people who didn’t come here, but rather, fled here, reinvented their pasts and now are on to promoting new scams that won’t work any better than they did from wherever they originated. In short, I don’t find more or less cool, good, or compelling people in San Miguel than I do in any other part of the world.
The whole inquiry led me to introspection (which led me nowhere). It was in extrospection (if that is a word) where I found the answer—out there.
For me the answer was “bang for the buck.”
Those who have been here long enough (or read the five-part series in Atención comparing the cost of living in San Miguel with various cities in the US) know the truth in spades: it is much less expensive to live in San Miguel, even though it is reputedly one of the most expensive cities in Mexico in which to live.
As I review my current lifestyle, I live in a home that is worth about US$1 million based on current San Miguel prices. The same house would cost about US$5 million on the Strand in Hermosa Beach. I have a full-time maid who charges US$125 a week but would set me back US$100 a day in any US city, a full-time gardener who I pay US$150 a week but would be US$400 a week in the US. I can go out to a nice dinner with wine and pay US$50 for two and walk to the restaurant. I pay US$4,400 a year for 90/10 cross-border health insurance for the two of us, which has doubled in the last six years but lets us make the decision where and from whom to get medical care worldwide. That kind of point-of-service policy is nearly impossible to find today in the US and would set us back at least US$24,000 a year if we lived in St. Louis. The US$20,000 savings on health insurance alone more than covers maid, gardener, taxes and utilities. And I as thought through it, the lifestyle list got longer and I quickly realized that I woul
d take a major step down in standard of living if I returned to the First World.
The cost to me is a few airline tickets to see the kids, or even better, I fly them here. While I can’t find a Zen Palate in San Miguel like I can in New York City, a Sushi Club as I can in southern California, or score James Blunt tickets like I can in Denver, I travel enough on business to enjoy these things and I judge any sacrifices I make to live here a small price to pay in order to live a life where administrative and household details are taken care of by others.
To some this will echo elitism, and they have a point, but I know no one who lives here full-time who could say honestly that “bang for the buck” didn’t have something to do with their being here, too.
I often wonder why more gringos don’t move to Mexico and why those who do come don’t stay. My anecdotal perspective after years of watching the revolving door is this: the average gringo who shows up in San Miguel “to live the rest of my life” lasts about two years, or until they discover the hard way why they should lock their doors, have a guard (or a very aggressive German Shepherd) on their property at night, take their blood pressure medication before connecting to the internet, learn the way to Laredo because that is where they will find the closest Best Buy, and watch carefully when the guy at PEMEX pumps their gas. In short, the learning curve is steep in this culture. One has to either sport a spirit of adventure or have an iron will that he or she will make it work come hell or high water. Most people have neither.
When I arrived in San Miguel, soon to be seven years ago, I was burned out and ready to live the rest of my life doing nothing. I had the money to do nothing and everything looked simple. Then, it dawned on me one day when I was doing nothing that doing nothing was boring and I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. Rather, I was ready to take on new challenges and I have done so without regret even though it has required a great deal of travel.
So, what keeps me here now since the original goal of doing nothing didn’t work out? What keeps me running the early morning road to the airport dodging 18-wheelers looking to make me more red jelly on bad plaid seat covers? Why do I put up with the hassles endemic to living here when San Francisco beckons?
Lifestyle.
San Miguel and all that it offers are my golden handcuffs, no different from execs with big companies who might leave for other opportunities but for the fact no one will pay them more money to do so and they have developed a lifestyle they are not willing to sacrifice.
Bottom line: In San Miguel you can live the life of the rich by simply being well to do. The question that resonates for many (even those too politically correct to utter it out loud): “Is it worth it?”
For me, the answer is “so far, so good.”
Thanks go out to Robin Page West of San Miguel for alerting Staring at Strangers to Karger's column.
Last night I went to a networking event and must have handed out 50 business cards. Early this morning I went to another networking event and handed out a similar number of cards.
Back to back networking events - I think I'm going nuts!
In the process of determining rates of inflation and other economic indicators, I wonder if the U.S. or other governments factor in the effect of services that once cost money but now are free.
At one time I would have to purchase several software packages costing hundreds of dollars if I wanted word processing, spreadsheet and presentation functionality on my personal computer. Today, there are several online sources where I can get this for free, including Google Docs.
Anti-virus software has been a necessity for anyone owning a personal computer since practically the dawn of its widespread use, and at one time you would have to come up with $20 to $40 for this product. But not anymore! You can download a free anti-virus program, such as AVG Anti-Virus Software, which will give you very good protection that is updated regularly just like the pay versions (when I checked just now, there were 74,503,129 downloads of this particular software on Download.com, so it must be having some effect on the economy).
Want free backup storage for your computer? Try Mozy. How about free Internet access? Lots of hotel lobbies and other public spaces provide free wireless access, plus often you can pick up wireless access from a neighbor.
You get the idea. So what effect is all of this free stuff having on the U.S. and world economy? Both businesses and individuals derive economic benefits from this trend. It might be interesting to know.
It was bound to happen. You've read all the press about the narco-terror along the border of the Rio Bravo. You've read about the dangers of Michoacán. One brave Canadian soldiered on to San Miguel de Allende, where he discovered the town taken over by gangs. See the film here.
The Sunday edition of The New York Times had an article about web services, such as FriendFeed, that allow people to "funnel all their online activities into a single information broadcast, and then blast that broadcast to anyone who wants to listen in."
Thus, your friends can get all of your daily twitterings from Twitter, the videos you've posted on YouTube, and all of the photos you've posted on Flickr.
But who would want to? Consider that if you subscribed to just a handful of friends' aggregator services you would be overwhelmed with digital nonsense, in addition to all of the email you already receive, why would anyone subject themselves to such torture?
Apparently there has to be a good reason why, because the article states that there are a growing number of these services.
Which only goes to prove that there are many people out there who have a lot more time on their hands than I do.
While at a digital media seminar this morning which I blog about below, a 90's version of the phrase that summed up the 60's popped into my head:
If you didn't raise money in the 90's you weren't really there.
Oh man, how mercantile, how cynical. Well, I don't believe it but I found it amusing. Hopefully you'll get a little chuckle out of it too.
This morning I attended a thought provoking breakfast seminar sponsored by the NYC law firm Herrick Feinstein entitled "The New Kings of Media - User-Generated Content: New Business Models & Legal Issues."
They had some very good speakers there. John Rose, Senior Partner and Managing Director of The Boston Consulting Group, started by saying that getting old had its advantages because he was there when the first web-based companies were formed. He made the very interesting observation that people today have no idea what the business models will be for user generated content websites, just like they had no idea what the business models would be for eBay and Yahoo!, which have gone thru numerous changes.
Lydia Loizides, a governor of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and who at most appears to be in her early 30's, strongly refuted his point, saying that the business model is that there is a seller and there is a buyer, thus proving John Rose's point that with age one acquires experience that with a little smarts can translate into wisdom, because she completely missed his point.
At the beginning of the seminar they played a very funny video clip entitled "Here Comes Another Bubble" song to the tune of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." Take a look below and let me know if you agree.
Last night, my friend Rocky, after leaving the hospital where he landed due to a broken wrist gotten from flirting with a redhead while crossing the street (see my full account of this incident here), explained to me his philosophy on communication between men and women:
Men just want to give the right answer, they don't care what it is. So while their wife, girlfriend or woman that they just met at the bar is talking away, the guy is only listening enough to figure out the best bullshit response. And the guy doesn't care what it is he has to say - he'll say anything, whether he believes it or not, whether it's true or not, just to make his lady happy. Especially when the woman asks that minefield question, "How do you feel about it?"
Faced with that question, a guy goes into internal panic. "Holy shit, she wants to know how I feel about something? How the hell do I know? I mean, ask me how I feel about the Boston Red Sox beating the Yankees, that I know." Yeah, beyond sports and sex, the male species is completely clueless as to how they feel about anything.
And here's where it really gets insane. The woman wants to know the precise opposite of what the guy is working furiously to come up with. She wants his true feelings, not some line that will get the guy laid or keep him out of trouble. Ha! Imagine that, the truth! Holy crap! If guys really did give honest answers to all of those "How do you feel?" or "Do I look fat in this?" questions, human beings as a species would be extinct!
Rocky was about three scotches into his evening by the time he finished his eloquent soliloquy.
As the Reverend Al, who moonlights as a lawyer, puts it:
I'm also at an age at which, when younger women "look" at me, I'm not quite sure whether they're flirting, or thinking I might be a good match for their mother.
Go the Church of What's Happening Now! to follow Rev. Al's trek from making meaningful eye contact with a twentysomething to his first unsolicited senior discount.
Not too long ago, those who considered themselves a notch above declared the quinceañera dead, substituting a cruise, a vacation trip or even the fifteen-year old's first boy-girl party for the big event. Even in those times, it was a rite of passage that just wouldn't give up the ghost.
A few summers ago, old man Jacobo's granddaughter and her chambelanes practiced their dance steps with a choreographer in the moonlight for weeks in front of my house. It would take them at least a year to pay off that party.
You saw the movie Quinceañera a few years ago, but it's more than just a Latina Bat Mizvah. Estadounidenses have caught on to the rage, too. Hearst Communications, Inc., publisher of the bible of my youth, Seventeen, now publishes MisQuinceMag.com, in English and in Spanish.
Like Estadounidenses who try to cut costs by scheduling a wedding or other event mid-week, some middle-class Mexicans have done likewise, paring back the quinceañera to a weeknight event with a family dinner at a nice restaurant.
For some poor girls living in Mexico City, that just wasn't an option. They wanted their moment of glamour and magic, even if it meant having to share the stage with other queen bees and wannabees. And they got together at the Youth Institute, rounded up donors, and held the world's largest mass quinceañera.
Detractors might question whether these girls should've been working on teen rights, culture, pay equity, job opportunities, family planning and other more important issues. But you know something? In organizing the mass quinceañera, they were doing just that and more: working toward a common goal and getting what they wanted. And that's not a bad approach.
It's getting rough out there for sick people. A article in today's Wall Street Journal describes a growing practice of hospitals demanding payment up front before giving treatment. Demands of more than $100,000 have been made for chemotherapy.
The article focuses on the experience of Lisa Kelly who was diagnosed with leukemia.
One day, Mrs. Kelly says, nurses wouldn't change the chemotherapy bag in her pump until her husband made a new payment. She says she sat for an hour hooked up to a pump that beeped that it was out of medicine, until he returned with proof of payment.
Patients in a hospital's business office now wonder if the clerk sitting opposite them is going to permit their cancer to be treated.
Estadounidenses really don't have much choice when it comes to presidential candidates: a witch, a guy with a foreign-born father, and an ex-con.
The U.S. is already outsourcing everything else, so why not the presidency? It outsources the nasty job of fighting its wars to poor folk and convicted felons, customer service, tech support and even legal research to India, and everything else to China. Being president really isn't something to be learned on the job, so it should go to a guy with some experience under his belt. And you really ought to have a president who has some familiarity with the U.S. and doesn't have to move a long distance.
Can we lend you Vicente Fox for the next eight years? Or even Carlos Salinas de Gortari? All right, so Ernesto Zedillo and Miguel de la Madrid but be better choices, but they're not around stirring up a lot of anxiety, so we'd sort of miss them.
Look at this way: Mexico does have some history of shipping off its ex-presidents elsewhere, and I'm sure a deal could be worked out to get around what the U.S. Constitution has to say about qualifying to be president. After all, Fox got the Mexican Constitution changed.
A fascinating 3 minute video of the 41 hours that Nicholas White was trapped in an elevator in the McGraw-Hill Building in NYC. It was a Friday night in October 1999 when Mr. White, returning from a cigarette break, walked into an elevator that changed his life.
I found the related April 21, 2008 New Yorker Magazine article, at http://tinyurl.com/572u5f, an interesting read.
Billie Mercer, who writes about ordinary and extraordinary lives in central Mexico, took on the topic of aprons, and I just had to comment about what aprons represented to my generation, which gave her fodder for more.
So I went out to the kitchen, where my thirty-something housekeeper was washing dishes, dressed in an ironed t-shirt and jeans, and asked her why she wasn't wearing a mandil. "Oh, those are just for working around my own house," she told me, rolling her eyes.
She obviously hadn't read Billie's blog -- or The Wall Street Journal article.
Don't keep me from the millions of women out there balancing themselves on high heels!
My friend Rocky is an irrepressible force here in NYC. Recently, he landed himself in the hospital from simultaneously attempting to cross the street, talk on his cell phone, and flirt with a woman walking towards him.
He collided with another pedestrian, sending him spinning in a fashion which assuredly was not going to win the heart of the lady who was the source of his distraction. Gravity won & Rocky went sailing to the ground, fracturing his wrist in the process.
In the hospital Rocky was a restless creature. He demanded to know when he could leave. A nurse explained that he'd have to wait, that they just wanted to be sure that he was stable. "Stable? Stable? Of course I'm stable, just look at me!"
The nurse was far too polite to point out to Rocky that the reason he was in the hospital in the first place was because he had failed to maintain his balance while crossing the street.
And Puerto Rice and the Virgin Islands. And Madagascar. And Newfoundland and Iceland. Global warming's more serious that I thought.
Mark Shead asked a handful of expatriates what prompted them to move to Mexico. Read on.
It's a question I tire of answering, but at least I answered truthfully. Because I could.
From the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog, we bring you Astrid Hadad.
"This Warren Hardy tote bag just shouts 'Look at the gringa who can't speak Spanish,'" complained a friend who fit the description at the time.
Kelsey Mulyk offers up some advice about the sure markers of a gringo in Mexico:
To those, I'd a few more identifiers: too much ethnic clothing, shorts worn outside of a resort or sporting activity, tire-treaded huaraches, campesino clothes, makeup-free eyes, shirt and jeans which have never seen an iron, and oversized clothes.
Who hasn't read the travel literature telling foreigners to leave the name-brands and jewelry at home? If you're going to fit in in Mexico, you'd better put on some makeup (at least if you're female), get rid of the gray hair, become acquainted with an iron, wear a good watch, and let Ralph Lauren, Coach, or Burberry see the light of day.
Y0u already knew about Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to Mexico two months before that fateful day in Dallas some forty-five years ago. The CIA's men on the ground knew about it, too. But did you know that two Mexican presidents were on the CIA payroll?
In "Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA," Jefferson Morley takes the reader behind the scenes during some interesting times, inviting comment at his blog.
And what happened to Scott after Kennedy was shot? Read Edward Jay Epstein's review in The Wall Street Journal. And Ken Silverstein's Six Questions for Jefferson Morley.
I am a true crime addict, unrepentantly so, and it’s all Truman Capote’s fault for writing that "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood back in 1965, about a Kansas farm family’s murder by two ex-cons. Before long, Anatomy of a Murder, a criminal defense lawyer’s true story of a bartender’s 1951 murder in Big Bay, Michigan, came into my hands, and I was on my way to ruin, descent and Helter Skelter.
"Filthy trash," snorted my high school English teacher. My explanation that true crime was the perfect education for a would-be lawyer fell upon deaf ears. Little did she realize, I’m sure, that In Cold Blood would be hailed as a literary triumph in years to come or that Robert Traver was the pen name of a future Michigan State Supreme Court Justice. Never once in two decades of trial practice have I ever put Milton’s lessons to work, but I have put some of the tricks learned in true crime stories to good use.
True crime stories date all the way back to Cain and Abel, predating Court TV and the national fascination with O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, and JonBenet Ramsey. What Capote made literary, Dominick Dunne made classy in his monthly Vanity Fair reportage of crimes of the rich and famous.
The usual triumph of good over evil in these modern morality tales bodes even more for practicing lawyers. Packaged neatly within the covers of a good true crime story is a bird’s-eye view of the dramatis personae–the victim, the perp, the police, and the lawyers and everyone around them–as real people leading ordinary lives. Where else can a reader learn about how law enforcement operates, what the average beat cop thinks of lawyers, how other lawyers deal with lovable clients as well as those from hell, all wrapped in shards and snippets of local color? And, if you’re lucky, the story will be laced with real-life trial techniques that can be fodder for real cases. Far more effective and interesting it is to hear Vincent Bugliosi describe a conversational style of cross-examination as he defends an uncooperative, disbelieving client charged with murder on Palmyra in And the Sea Will Tell, than to pore over the rules in the sterile case analysis.
Some true crime stories are little more than a quick pastiche of news articles, tabloids for those with an attention span, tossed together to meet a publisher’s race to the bookrack. As a general rule, those written by lawyers involved in the case make for poor reading, often written in gloating vindication. The genre’s got its all-star authors, who surprisingly give each saga its unique twist. Jerry Bledsoe, Ann Rule, Ken Englade, Darcy O’Brien, Aphrodite Jones and the Steven Naifeh and Gregory Smith lawyer duo all come from disparate backgrounds, but each brings that certain fly-on-the-wall approach that’s guaranteed to leave the reader with at least one new practice tip.
Believe me, crediting true crime stories with making better lawyers is definitely not the counterpart to claims of reading Playboy only for the interviews. Sure, there’s an element of voyeurism, just as many of us truthfully can’t take our eyes off a gruesome car accident or the cover of the National Enquirer. The rest of the story lies far beyond the uniformly boring volumes of a trial transcript. Where else can you get an evening’s continuing legal education for the paltry sum of $5.95, provided you’re willing to endure those funny looks and sneers?
Originally published in SOLO (Fall 1999 Volume 7, Number 1).
I knew it! I knew it! For years now I've been worried that those mad scientists in Switzerland who were constructing the Large Hadron Collider ("LHC" for those in the know) would destroy us all when it started spitting out black holes, sucking the LHC and the rest of the world into the void. What a way to go!
I felt like some nutty person walking down the street with a big sign proclaiming in a crazed scrawl "The End of the World is Near!" But now you only have to look at today's New York Times to confirm the truth of this possible outcome from the startup of the LHC this summer.
Yes, scientists say, the LHC could create mini black holes, but they almost certainly would immediately dissolve without doing any damage.
First, let's look at the term "mini black hole." Sort of an oxymoron if you ask me. There is nothing "mini" about a black hole, no matter what its size.
Second, anything that we know about black holes is theory, scientists never having been close enough to one to test it out first hand. Besides, if anyone ever got so close to a black hole that they traveled across its "event horizon," the gravitational force would be so strong that all of the atoms making up the lucky person's body would be strung out in a line as they got sucked into the black hole. Dream about that tonight, if you will.
They were going to startup the LHC this past summer, but they had some trouble with the magnets and thus were delayed a year. A one year reprieve, I thought.
But now it looks like it's a go, for real. So here are my predictions as to events surrounding the LHC startup this summer:
1. As the date gets closer there will be protests around the world demanding the dismantling of the LHC.
2. There will be "end of the world" parties. Get in early on this one and you will look very hip. I can even see marketers creating products around this theme - buttons, t-shirts, songs, party favors, health drinks (what a contradiction there!), etc.
3. The candy and cake makers will see a surge in the sales of their products due to people thinking, "Hey, why bother eating healthy when I'm due to be sucked into the void this summer?" So start buying up their stocks now!
So, maybe I didn't cheer you up with my post, but just think, you no longer have to concern yourself with environmental decay, economic recession and somehow achieving world peace.
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