| Strengthening La Nina could mean more hurricanes By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID 2010-09-09T17:21:36ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- The La Nina climate phenomenon is strengthening, increasing the likelihood an active hurricane season could get even busier.... hosted.ap.org |
Outlays Blocked for Charging Stations Legislation would be needed to permit the Capitol's steward to spend its budgeted money on car charging stations for employees and lawmakers. feeds.nytimes.com |
The mystery of mass: What makes one particle light and another heavy? The author of Massive introduces a short film that summarises quantum mechanics and the quest for the Higgs bosonThe origin of mass is one of the most intriguing mysteries of nature. Some particles, such as the W boson (which carries the weak force) have so much mass they barely move, while others, like the photon, are entirely massless and zip around at the speed of light. What is it that makes one particle light and another heavy?The mass of fundamental particles those that carry forces and build nuclei and atoms is often explained by the way they move through an invisible "Higgs field" that is thought to pervade the vacuum of space. To some particles, such as the top quark, the Higgs field is like molasses: they get bogged down and become very heavy. To others, like the photon, the field is empty space: they fly through unimpeded and gain no weight at all. In this exclusive video, our kid Brian Cox explains how giant particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva, are closing in on the elusive Higgs particle. When and if they do, the puzzle of mass will be solved.Particle physicsCernPhysicsIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
This play was all ancient Greek to me. But I liked it The Cambridge Greek Play has survived for 128 years. But watching ancient tragedy in the original is still a revelatory experienceLast week, Cambridge University presented a play in ancient Greek. You'd really not think there'd be much call for this any more, and even card-carrying Athenians plumped for a month of Michael Jackson instead. But the Cambridge Arts Theatre says Agamemnon was a sell-out.Now turned 128, the Cambridge Greek Play has set root in the British stage as a quirky but hardy triennial, its alumni spanning Ralph Vaughan Williams (composer of incidental music to The Wasps in 1909) to Annie Castledine (director of the two prior to this year's). It seems hard enough a trick to have managed in 1882; harder still in 2010.I went on opening night, baffled how this thing, against all odds, exists. Though there are surtitles since 2001 most of a decidedly rapt audience did not seem glued to them. (This included the man in front of me, though I later discovered he was Professor Simon Goldhill, university professor of Greek.)If you don't speak the lingo, it's the soundworld of ancient Greek awash with strange noises and rhythmic tides that strikes you. Goldhill explained it to me after: in the modulated stress patterns like the heroic dochmiacs, reserved for moments of high drama and voices which sometimes sing, speak, chant and semi-sing, lurk rich emotional registers cloaked in the materiality of the language. And if we're accustomed to hearing Tosca in the original, why not Troy?Yet there's more to theatre, of course, than the language: the intention behind the Cambridge Greek Play has always been to provide professional stagings, not readings, with original music and professional directors. And Helen Eastman's production was visually sumptuous, Hellenic eye-candy. Designer Neil Irish conceived a chorus kitted out in bowler hat, demob suits and just enough makeup to hint at the theatrical mask, each different enough to suggest they're individuals. Attired in bridal veil and leather greatcoat, Phoebe Haines offered a kind of Cindi Lauper punk to Cassandra; and she even crowd-surfed over the chorus in a prophetic fit. Sophie Crawford's boy herald, in khakis, was a cross-dressing Lawrence of Arabia. Here, too, it's noteworthy Eastman opted not to make these soldiers, who have just returned from 10 years of war, into squaddies of the Black Watch. (Critics thought Cambridge played the Balkan wars too insistently in 1998's Trojan Women; in any case, there are surely only so many times you can dress actors in 20th-century soldier uniforms.In one of the more delectable visual moments, Eastman stages the human sacrifice of Iphigenia taking place before the soldiers depart for Troy by having the chorus behead a bouquet of yellow flowers, wrapped in a yellow dress; when Katherine Jack's Clytemnestra later appears, backed by a family portrait with a daughter clad in yellow, this play's judgment of her motive for killing Agamemnon becomes clear. Eastman has to draw on Judeo-Christian tradition, as the principal point of religious reference for audiences, but the stage is suffused with religious sacrifice: the chorus carry portable altars, religion-boxes out of which fire, water, blood and the tapestries on which Agamemnon treads can all be drawn. Among Romantic critics, Schlegel came up with the idea that the chorus are a kind of ideal audience, and so Eastman's are not universally the old men of the text. This chorus moves and speaks collectively, but not the same way at the same time.There is an EastEnders-ish cliffhanger, where in the concluding instant Orestes silently appears bathed in a spotlight, hinting at new cycles of vengeance. But it's a production which revolves around its Cassandra. Determined to portray her character first and foremost as a prisoner of war having suffered rape and negligence, Haines surrounded herself in the rehearsal rooms with photographs of refugee camps and horrors of contemporary wars. Alex Silverman's score, in 11-8 and 7-8 time signatures reflecting the text's metres, was fitted round her mezzo.By the end, I realised I'd been seized by the zeal of a proselyte. The only sadness is that I'll have to wait another three years.TheatreLanguageUniversity of CambridgeClassicsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Groups fight over fox-hunting law Pro and anti-hunting groups debate the law, after the UK's first double conviction under the controversial hunting act. bbc.co.uk |