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May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting

May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review August 25, 2004 / 9 Elul 5764

Wouk's fiction reveals facts of science, politics

By Tom Siegfried

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In the famed novelist's latest, answering arcane questions about the origin of the universe could unleash knowledge with unforeseen power to transform modern life

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | Though truth is often stranger than fiction, fiction often has a way of telling the truth.


Science fiction, of course, often tells the truth about the future. Fiction about science, on the other hand, can reveal interesting truths about the past. And that's what Herman Wouk tries to do in his new novel about "A Hole in Texas."


For those who weren't paying attention a decade or so ago, the hole is near Waxahachie, in Ellis County, where physicists had hoped to construct the grandest scientific instrument in history, a giant atom smasher powerful enough to probe the origins of the universe. Called the Superconducting Super Collider, or SSC, it would have fired bits of atoms at blinding speed around a 54-mile racetrack tunnel, smashing them into one another with enough impact to create particles previously only imagined.


Physicists hoped the SSC would produce an extremely elusive and mysterious particle named the Higgs boson. To oversimplify, the Higgs is the missing piece in the master puzzle encompassing the blueprint for the universe. Without the Higgs, modern science's understanding of the particles and forces making up the cosmos doesn't quite make sense. Without the Higgs, it's hard to explain even why the known particles possess any mass.


Understanding the universe's origin and the physical basis for existence seemed like a good idea in 1988, when Congress voted to build the SSC. But by 1993, with the tunnel only partly dug, political winds had shifted. Congress killed the SSC, and the Higgs remains undiscovered to this day.

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Wouk, famous for "The Caine Mutiny" and "The Winds of War," tells of the SSC's demise via fictional characters who suffered because of the government's snub of science. But he places his plot not in the past but present day, in order to examine the possible perils of governmental shortsightedness. In Wouk's world, Chinese scientists report that they have discovered the Higgs boson, throwing the U.S. media into a frenzy over the possible Chinese monopoly on the "boson bomb."


Much of Wouk's tale is right on target, as his characters articulate the goals and dreams of physicists faithfully. And he captures the mix of personalities and political machinations that guide the supposedly dispassionate decisions about science policy. Also, the chief villain in this novel is, naturally, a newspaper reporter (a political reporter out for scandal, bamboozled by the science). On the other hand, Wouk suggests that the discovery of the Higgs boson was covered in The Dallas Morning News with an AP wire story, something that would have happened only over a certain science editor's dead body. And he seems a little confused over the difference between scientific journals and magazines.


Nevertheless, his story sheds a lot of light on society's misunderstandings and mismanagement of modern science. When it comes to science, politicians don't know what they're doing. Of course, when it comes to politics, scientists apparently don't know what they are doing, either. Science and politics are like matter and antimatter, annihilating explosively whenever they meet.

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Wouk's book contains hints about how to narrow the science-politics gap. The main strategy seems to be sending the book's star scientist, astrophysicist Guy Carpenter, to mesmerize an ex-movie star congresswoman with seductive tales of Higgs boson history. With Saganesque style, Carpenter links the quest for pure knowledge pursued by the ancient Greeks with the practical payoffs from modern day technology.


The Greeks jump-started science, he explained, by asking a simple question: What's the smallest thing that exists?


"By seeking and finding an answer we got the Bomb, we got nuclear power plants and submarines, we learned how the sun and the stars shine, and there were huge benefits in medical fallout," Carpenter wrote to the congresswoman.


Today, he said, the Higgs search is at the heart of the quest to answer a similarly deep question: How come anything at all exists?


Answering that question may or may not produce a payback comparable to the spinoffs from understanding the atom, Carpenter acknowledged: "It's the essence of basic research, you see ... , that its outcome is unknowable."


So it was nonsense when a fictional Peter Jennings reported on TV that it was "known" that the "boson bomb ... will exceed the destructive power of the H-bomb, as the H-bomb exceeds gunpowder."


In fact, Higgs bosons would be worthless for making bombs. If you want to outblast H-bombs, you need to make Q-balls, hypothetical blobs of "SUSY" particles (short for supersymmetric). Many physicists believe that SUSY particles lurk throughout the universe. But to produce them on Earth, you'd need a giant atom smasher, like the one that Congress killed. So it's not nonsense to suspect that answering arcane questions about the origin of the universe could unleash knowledge with unforeseen power to transform modern life.


Of course, even if SUSY particles and Q-balls do exist, it's unlikely that the SSC or any other conceivable technology could turn them into bombs or power plants or power sources for submarines. But Q-ball technology might make a great science-fiction story — or Herman Wouk novel.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washinton and the media consider must reading. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Tom Siegfried is science editor for The Dallas Morning News. To comment, please click here.

© 2004, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services