The new Vanity Fair* has an article on CERN, which trumpets the site's inherent practical uselessness in the subheadline. Something to the effect of CERN being an 8 billion dollar Sharper Image-type toy for happy-go-lucky quantum physicists.
Unfortunately the article isn't online, but I do plan on giving it a read at the library sometime this week. I'll get back if there are any pertinent tidbits therein.
As I said before, I don't think CERN is some kind of lab experiment ("let's smash some atoms, la la la"). One wonders what kind of havoc could be wreaked if they ever somehow hooked up the LHC with HAARP (check out reader Dark Star's post on HAARP here) or other such exotic tech/weaponry. The mind reels.
Given the Shiva statue on the grounds, one wonders if someone is tired of waiting for the gods to return and has decided to chase them down in whatever alternate reality they may have dropped in from.
Or not- I'm not ashamed to admit the only thing I'm sure of about the LHC is that it's a much more serious proposal that anyone is telling the press. They're not even bothering to give the thing a credible cover-story.
Let's hope the lyrics to this killer Killing Joke b-side 'Universe B' aren't prophetic:
Visions of a bleak future world
What is there left that we see
Unholy pylons stretch across black deserts
Mankind's reward for his greed
Coincidentally, Hoagland has also done work parsing the semiotic (and other) mysteries of that disaster. Amazingly, Katrina is yet another variation on Ka-Athyr-Ein and again, Hathor was known as the "destroyer of mankind" in her form as Sekhmet.UPDATE: Reader DarkStar888's guerilla semiotics led me to this little revelation - HAARP and CERN - the harp and corn- the heavens and the earth.
Our little scientistic friends have breathtaking ambitions, no?