krpalmer: (Default)
krpalmer ([personal profile] krpalmer) wrote2008-09-10 05:50 pm
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Still Here...

Assorted discussion of late about the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider, and especially the efforts by some to find "risks" in it, have made me think a little. I suppose I agree quite firmly with those who aren't worried, such as the Bad Astronomer, but I can somehow see it as a "comforting" "technological apocalypse," if you're worried about "our own cleverness doing us in!" Worries about "too much stuff being put into the air" or "too little stuff to take out of the ground" seem to sound as if they threaten the way everybody lives, but a particle accelerator seems to be something the worried can do without... of course, I can also see it as being something for people to not take quite seriously, the way we wound up being able to look back on "Y2K" fears. (And at least for the moment, there are status reports on whether we're here or not.)