[Editors] LHC rap and a booktalk tonight

[Eve Sullivan]

Dear Editors/Friends,

I enjoyed reading the msg. 'ending far from Hollywood.'  Wow!  It 
prompts me to share with this list:

Tuesday evening I heard my boss Frank Wilczek speak about his new 
book The Lightness of Being at Harvard Bookstore.  To introduce his 
talk he used this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6aU-wFSqt0

One of my sons had seen Frank on the news talking about the death 
threats. Crazy. What's amazing about the LHC, to me, is that it is so 
huge!  and yet it focuses on bits of matter that are tinier than 
tiny.  Most amazing.  When he was asked about the black holes, he 
said that they are miniscule-miniscule and that worrying about them 
is like people with a justifiable fear of elephants as a result being 
afraid of being trampled by amoeba.  Interesting image.  He said that 
the tiny black holes dissipate with no ill effects.

He said that our study of the stuff of our environment -he calls it 
'the grid'-  is like fish studying water.  It is all around us and we 
know very little about it.  His book, reviewed in this week's 
Economist, is a hard read.  I have it from the library and will try 
again to at least browse it.

Book talk *tonight* ...I read and very much enjoyed Maggie Jackson's 
Distracted. She is reading and signing books at the Wellesley 
Booksmith at 7 this evening.

Eve Sullivan

http://www.maggie-jackson.com
http://www.wellesleybooksmith.com
Thursday, September 11, at 7 pm
MAGGIE JACKSON - Distracted: The Erosion of Attention & the Coming Dark Age
Reading, Discussion, Book-Signing
Distracted? And how. Beeped and pinged, interrupted and inundated,
overloaded and hurried - that's how we live today. We prize knowledge
work - work that relies on our intellectual abilities - and yet
increasingly feel that we have no time to think. For all our
connectivity, we often catch little more than snippets and glimpses
of one another.
Um, what were we talking about? Oh yes!! Come focus on Maggie
Jackson's talk based on her book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention
and the Coming Dark Age, which details the steep costs of our current
epidemic deficits of attention, while revealing the astonishing
scientific discoveries that can help us rekindle our powers of focus
in a world of speed and overload.