How soon after the claim that the Higgs discovery is 'international' did self-loathing Americans and Europeans ridicule the American institutions that issued press releases noting their part in the work?
About a day. The smug intimation was because America did not want to fund the whole LHC completely - understandable given the fiasco of the Superconducting Supercollider - that we somehow 'lost out' on the discovery and made no contributions worth mentioning.
When the only organization who thinks continued funding of your technology is the United Steelworkers union, you may have a business problem.
Gamesa Wind Corporation has announced a layoff of 165 workers at plants in Fairless Hills and Ebensburg, Pa. The United Steelworkers (USW) says non-renewal of the the Production Tax Credit (PTC), which expires on December 31st, 2012, is the problem.
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I wrote about watching the Higgs discovery, I chided scientists on Twitter for over-reaching regarding what was being said and lauded science journalists for showing some moderation, but that does not mean all journalists could resist being silly. And it doesn't mean all scientists were over-reaching.
I stayed up late (California) to watch the Higgs announcement and posted various thoughts of my own, and comments from the presentations, on my Twitter feed.
You remember when temperatures became really moderate and every heat wave could no longer be called global warming because we were not warning. We were enduring climate change instead. That makes some sense, instability is going to occur when things get weird in the atmosphere. Almost everyone thought global warming was a terrible term anyway, lacking any science justification, but global warming is a huge part of why science journalists lost the confidence of the public, and then their jobs because no one felt like journalists were trusted guides on the issue.
Below is a live streaming webcast from the auditorium at CERN, where they will be revealing the latest news on the Higgs discovery.