It seems he's making a parallel between the story of Robert Johnson (blues musician who purportedly "sold his soul to the devil" in exchange for guitar skills) and our discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. This "don't know who is gonna rip off who" part is the real issue -- did we compromise anything in order to make this discovery, and what impact will it have on our world? Will it help us as a society or will it lead us down a path of further environmental destruction?
The "Higgs Boson Blues" seems to suggest that the future holds little direction or meaning. The discovery of the Higgs Boson completed the Standard Model of particle physics, so where do we go from here?
The only thing we can be certain of is our impending mortality, and it can come with little warning to anyone, no matter their moral standing. He paints a picture of the assassination of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis as a jarring example of this.
In the great uncertainty that follows death, material requests like "bury me in my favorite yellow patent leather shoes" seem trivial. Our society's superficial fixation on celebrities like Miley Cyrus seem especially banal in the wake of this.
The line "look here comes the missionary with his smallpox and flu" describes a double edged sword. We are always searching for ways to better our society, but it comes at a cost.
I like what you're saying. I think the "higgs boson blues" might refer to the "double edged sword" you refer to, in that new ideas/knowledge or what ever always seems to come at some terrible cost. Maybe in this he is imagining that the CERN experiment failed and destroyed the world, the most extreme example of this...
I like what you're saying. I think the "higgs boson blues" might refer to the "double edged sword" you refer to, in that new ideas/knowledge or what ever always seems to come at some terrible cost. Maybe in this he is imagining that the CERN experiment failed and destroyed the world, the most extreme example of this...
It seems he's making a parallel between the story of Robert Johnson (blues musician who purportedly "sold his soul to the devil" in exchange for guitar skills) and our discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. This "don't know who is gonna rip off who" part is the real issue -- did we compromise anything in order to make this discovery, and what impact will it have on our world? Will it help us as a society or will it lead us down a path of further environmental destruction?
The "Higgs Boson Blues" seems to suggest that the future holds little direction or meaning. The discovery of the Higgs Boson completed the Standard Model of particle physics, so where do we go from here?
The only thing we can be certain of is our impending mortality, and it can come with little warning to anyone, no matter their moral standing. He paints a picture of the assassination of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis as a jarring example of this.
In the great uncertainty that follows death, material requests like "bury me in my favorite yellow patent leather shoes" seem trivial. Our society's superficial fixation on celebrities like Miley Cyrus seem especially banal in the wake of this.
The line "look here comes the missionary with his smallpox and flu" describes a double edged sword. We are always searching for ways to better our society, but it comes at a cost.
I like what you're saying. I think the "higgs boson blues" might refer to the "double edged sword" you refer to, in that new ideas/knowledge or what ever always seems to come at some terrible cost. Maybe in this he is imagining that the CERN experiment failed and destroyed the world, the most extreme example of this...
I like what you're saying. I think the "higgs boson blues" might refer to the "double edged sword" you refer to, in that new ideas/knowledge or what ever always seems to come at some terrible cost. Maybe in this he is imagining that the CERN experiment failed and destroyed the world, the most extreme example of this...