Rush Limbaugh: Dishing teh stoopid

I had the unfortunate opportunity to hear Rush Limbaugh's show yesterday. Even worse, I read the transcript. See anything stricking:

By the way, it is this vast particle collider at the CERN research centre that
they say could replace the Internet, with speeds so fast that you'll be able to
download a high definition movie, a two-hour high definition movie in three
seconds. They're going to use a particle accelerator and collider for it.

NO! The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outputs large datasets that data-transfer is burdened by current technologies. By utilizing essentially parallel computing technologies (interfacing both hardware and software) you can overcome the data-transfer problem. The 'Grid' is not equivalent to the LHC, though it was developed as an answer to the so-called large data problem.

In other words, he's looking for a "God particle." He's looking for a
particle to prove God. Dr. Higgs, please, just look out the window. You see that
tree? You see the grass? Whatever is outside your window, all of it, it's God
particles. Every aspect of it is God particles.

I liked Leon Lederman's book. It was a fun read. Limbaugh has ruined the book for me. Thank you idiotic commentator on current events for ruining science for me.

But in all seriousness, the Higg's boson, which would essentially explain the reason for the massless photon and heavy W and Z bosons, is an important fundamental particle of the Standard Model. I wouldn't have called it the "God particle" as Lederman playfully called in his book, but that's just a diversion from the more important aspect of its discovery: electroweak symmetry breaking.

But Limbaugh and other media sources have sipped from teh stoopid kool-aid. They lacked reading comprehension to see why Lederman called the Higgs boson the God particle. I'm too frustrated at the moment to expand any further. Teh stoopid hurts my brain too much.

These scientists, they fear God because God has the answers, God's smarter
than they are.

God's a civil engineer. Only a civil engineer would put a recreational area in a waste zone.

But seriously, the above quote is one of those "he didn't just say it, right?" *shrug* I don't fear God. His followers scare me enough as it is.

In fact, one of these guys in Ben Stein's movie, guy named Hawkins who's over at
Oxford I think, Oxford or Cambridge, Ben Stein goes over and interviews him in
this movie, Expelled.

Hawking is a theoretical physicist from Cambridge. Dawkins is an ethologist and evolutionary biologist from Oxford. Only Limbaugh would be capable of combining the names together in a horrific screed.

And the movie is the laughing stock of the blogosphere. Especially when PZ Myers was kicked-out of a screening despite him actually being in the film.

Ugh. The internet has exemplified teh stoopid which existed even before the internet was popular outside of physicists. Shame on the internet for promoting teh stoopid to higher levels. And shame on Limbaugh for being a participant in teh stoopid.