Higgs boson, R2D2, Southern Wildabeasts, Legalese, and the Storyteller

Awesome links for today

Higgs on Higgs from Boing Boing: Great article from the man himself talking about what it means to be a "God particle" (not at all what you're thinking), and how its discovery may or may not mean anything for mankind.

Beasts of the Southern Wild from io9: This movie looks like Pan's Labyrinth set in the American South to me.

Christians can change their minds on homosexuality. I know, because I did. from the Washington Post: this is a wonderful story of what it takes for humans to change their minds.

Feeling a lot less bad about our Desk of Geekdom after seeing this:

Republican Horrified to Discover that Christianity is Not the Only Religion from Jezebel: Idjit.

"One Louisiana Republican is learning the hard way that religious school vouchers can be used to fund education at all sorts of religious schools, even Muslim ones. And while she's totally in favor of taxpayer money being used to pay for kids to go to Christian schools, she's willing to put a stop to the entire program if Muslim schools are going to be involved."

And in light of that stunner, I thought reblogging a selection of Neil Gaiman's thoughts on free speech in the artist community would be appropriate: Why defend freedom of icky speech.

"If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said.

The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't. This is how the Law is made.

The First Amendment states that you can't be arrested for saying things the government doesn't like. You can say what you like, write what you like, and know that the remedy to someone saying or writing or showing something that offends you is not to read it, or to speak out against it.

(And let it be understood that I think that child pornography, and the exploitation of actual children for porn or for sex is utterly wrong and bad, because actual children are being directly harmed. And also that I think that prosecuting as "child pornographers" a 16 and 17 year old who were legally able to have sex, because they took a sexual photograph of themselves and emailed it to themselves is utterly, insanely wrong, and a nice example of the law as blunt instrument.)"

PSA time! You know, now that I think about it, those things are only related in my head because I'm grouping all "people who only like what they find acceptable" into one big group. One should not take from this that I'm grouping Muslims with potential child pornographers. That would be the *wrong* message to take away from this post.

10 Great Science Fiction Novels with Go-Back-To-Bed Depressing Endings from io9: Now I don't have to actually read most of these. Thanks, io9! (I've already read or seen the movies of 4 out of 11.)

Do you like zombies, country music, and feminism? Then this album (Play Dead: a Zombie Rock Opera) is all about you!

And lastly, LEGO Cthulhu rides a Segway, amiright?

Awesome tv and movies consumed

The Storyteller: the Greek Myths with Michael Gambon: all the adorable storytelling of the original Storyteller but with Dumbledore explaining the myths a la Clarissa Darling.