Cynical Nation

Remember that old Joe South song that goes

But there's a six-lane highway down by the creek
Where I went skinny dippin' as a child
And a drive-in show where the meadow used to grow
And the strawberries used to grow wild

My graduate studies were in nuclear physics, and I spent several summers back during the 80's at Long Island's Brookhaven National Laboratory. Back then, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) didn't exist yet. All there was at the site were some enormous empty tunnels, dug for a different accelerator project that never got off the ground. The tunnels stood as a monument to fiscal and bureaucratic incompetence and government boondoggles... but they looked really cool and spooky at night.

In short, it was the big make-out spot in those days. Or a place for drinking beer, if you were a physics geek with no girlfriend. I have many fond memories of hanging out by those huge empty holes on a summer night with my friends, watching the deer watching us, curiously from the tree line, and getting quietly drunk.

Well how things have changed! Right now, on that same piece of property, scientists are creating black holes. Well, maybe....

Anyway, check it out. It's an interesting read, and a story that's near and dear to my heart.