FOOD FOR THOUGHT!!

[AngelofGOD]

My Lord has instructed me yesterday to come and Bless Kobe in writing. I normally dont bless anyone. I would normally say to people may The Lord bless you because I'll leave it up to the Lord to bless you.

If I should however say Lord bless you then it is done.

One of the reson why I rarely bless anyone it is because I have seen what many has done with their blessings. They have used it to oppressed the less unfortunate.

Therefore I have found away to break down one of the many teachings that My Lord has taught me.

I'm about to opened you up to something that you have never seen before, well you have seen it but never understood it.


$ T
I want you to look at the sign for money. and look at the sign for the cross.

My Lord taught me this. When I couldn't figure it out My Lord explain it to me in many different ways.

My Lord said," The vertical lines in both these signs represent us. The straight line on top represent how we place God the Father in our lifes.

The Straight line on top shows the straight path that we should walk with The Lord. Straight and narrow path. The people who walk this path place God on Top in their lives.

My Lord said the second sign represent the Mark Of the Beast. The straight line in the s represent us again, and the straight line that was once on top has become bent with curves, has now taken the shape of the serpent lucifer who wrap himselft around the @#%$ in the garden of eden.

The s in the dollar sign is the serpent around us. Money. When we stop placeing God on top, Money begins to wrapped itself around us. Do you know what money does when it takes the shape of the serpent. It begins to suck the very life out of you.

You never know why the dollar sign represent the mark of the beast yet you have been making it all these years and never understood this.

Anyone who makes money and spends money and doesn't have God on top has taken the mark of the beast.

The number of the beast is 666. Three six figure. They love to talk about their Six figure this and Six figure that.

have you ever driven up or down a mountain with lots of curves in it. I have and I can tell you this it will wear out the brakes on big trucks. You never knows whats around the corner because you can't see around the corner.

When you walk a straight path with God one can always see down the road.

Jesus has already Cut the path for you to walk. You just have to walk it and why is that so hard.

I know Sean Combs is of the offspring of KIng Solomon, his spirit knows Christ.

I saw that post of the New York times and Sean was sending a message to me.

Sean spirit is in control of Sean not his Flesh. I was a bit worried there might be some Puff Daddy left in him but he said am matured now.

Sean spirit knows the things I worry about concerning him and he finds ways to reaasured me that his spirit is mastering his flesh.

The reason why Sean ran his plans across his three and seven year old and Kim it is because Sean knows he isn't any ordinary man.

Sean truly wants to help the people from his heart but he knows there are those you has gone to very great lengths to keep many down.

Sean is trying to reach the people and in order for him to do this he must break it down to where they can understand this.

Sean three year old represent the mental state of some grown folks, so he works on his plan where a three year old can understand this.

Sean seven year old represent the mental state of some grown folks so he workds on his plan where a seven year old can understand it.

Sean girlfriend represent the meantal state of certain kind of people so he workds on his plan were they can understand it.

Sean has to find away to break things down like a mother feeding a young child soft food, because babies can't eat hard food has yet.

When I was watching Sean in making da band, one of the lady was rolling her eyes at Sean but she did this mentally not phyiscally and Sean got mad and said to her " I know your rolling your eyes at me" She denied doing this and the other band members at the table were looking puzzled. She didn't do this physically she did it mentally and Sean read her.

When Sean said he is going to make the two candidates uncomfortable he means it. Sean is the human lie detector. Sean is mother nature of knowing when someone is lieing.

Don't matter how bad you want to lie to Sean, don't do it, and if you do, please make it such a good one he'll admire you for it.

Anyone that is for Christ cares about the smallest person. A true King cares for all his people. Sean is exibiting all the qualities of a True King.

He is rich but he looks and see how others suffer and it breaks his heart that he can't help like the way he wants to.

Sean wants changed but I wish him luck in this venture.

Wicked men has secretly, have you making the mark of the beast all this time and not one of you realized that.

You never knew all that time your making the dollar signs you make the mark of the beast.

One can be rich and serve God. Stop letting people take the word and twist it. No man can serve God and money, so if your a christian you need to be broke and disgusted.

You can have alot of money and know God,yet those same hypocrites got themselves lawyers to protect them when they touch the children now they are talking.

They came out of Rome and they deceived the world with their lies. They preach the word of God only for a profit. They give the people salvation but never allow them to grow spiritually.

They have known for the longest time that these wicked men were touching the children and covered it up.

These things were done since the time of King Henry the Fourth. They removed the true leaders in the Church and replace them with wicked men of their own.

They over these years used the Church as a secret heaven to carry out their wicked acts but now you have come undone.

If your in a church and the Pastor is gay, get out of that Church, how can he lead you to Salvation when he is lost himself.

If God is no respecter of person why did Jesus went and took Sodom and Gomorrah down. Why because God doesn't prefer one nation over another and one town over another.

It is rare when My Lord calls me and say Go and support my servant Kobe, as a matter of a fact I have never received a call like that before, where I had to come out in the open and support Kobe.

I had never had to come out in full view of men to support anyone. its always in the spirit that I work.

My Lord sent me to Bless Kobe and so I showed to him these two signs of what will happened to him if he should fail to walk a straight path.

I break it down where he can understand this. I showed him the sign of the mark of the beast. You'll need money to get by in this world kobe, but you must walk that path.
If you should fail to walk that path it will become bent and will take the shape of the serpent warpped around a @#%$.

I want you Kobe to understand this before I bless you.
I'll come back to type this blessing with a condition attached to it.

If there is anything that you want included in your blessing remember how to come to the gate. My Lord will instruct me on what I should include.

I live a very simple life, I can't use my powers for my own financial gains, I can only used them to help others.

also I missed Mondays game. I was flying home to watch the game and a very deep sleep came over me. I was been called. I had to find the nearest gas station and pull over in a safe area, make sure the doors are lock and lay back.

I left my body and I check around for the police. The may see me lean back and come to asked questions and since am not inside of my body, they may disturbe me.

I was with other angels in the secret country fighting. We have been trying to stabalized a certain town where I can take these two boys to see some of My relatives but there are those their that has fallen.

Lucifer doesn't have any idea of the time so he has gathered other demons to this place and I have a hard time driving these demons out because they're my own relatives.

I know how Jesus felt that day when he sent those demons into the pigs and what they did with the entire herd. I know my Lord went back later in the spirit.

When I return to my body of the flesh it was 9.45, I was gone for almost an hour. I went home and fell into another deep sleep and I didn't return to my body until four hours later.

I got up and got me something to eat, I was hungry and weak. I have to be careful to take good care of my body of the flesh.

My Lord had me swear to him yesterday not to ever take his two witness to that place. it is too dangerous but My relatives that are still alive can however come to see them.

I wanted so bad to let them see one of the place where I was raised but I know how dangerous it is.

My mother use to visit there with me. I once had a bady brother and something fell on the bed and bit him, I remembered it very well and within twenty four hours my brother was dead.

The next time you make the dollar sign remember what your're making.

[Avalon]

Fark off you dizzy biotch. This is NOT the week to screw with me, trust me on this.

[Smartypants]

And zero thought *I* was verbose!

[zenbabe]

All I want is somebody who’s gonna love me for me
Somebody I can love for them
All this money don’t mean s***
When you got nobody to share it with
Love rules the world
You feel me

He don’t understand you like I do (He don’t understand you)
No, he’ll never make love to you like I do
So give it to me
‘Cause I can show you ‘bout a real love
And I can promise anything that I do
Is just to satisfy you

When you hurt, I ease the pain, girl
Caress your frame, get them worries off your brain, girl
I’m in your corner, do what you want, it’s your thing, girl
I persist and try but one in the same girl, it ain’t a game
So I can’t play wit’ you, I wanna lay wit’ you
Stay wit’ you, pray wit’ you, grow old and gray wit’ you
In good and bad times, we’ll always make it through
‘Cause what we got is true, no matter what they say to you
I could straight lace you, not just appearance
Stimulate your mind, strengthen your spirits
Be that voice of reason when you ain’t tryin’ to hear it
You want it, but you fear it, but you love it when you near it
Sit her on the sofa, get a little closer
Touch you right, do it like a man’s supposed to
Knew you was the one, that’s why I chose ya
‘Cause you get down for yours and ride like a soldier

He don’t understand you like I do (No, he don’t, no, he don’t)
No, he’ll never make love to you like I do
So give it to me (Give it to me, baby)
‘Cause I can show you ‘bout a real love
And I can promise anything that I do
Is just to satisfy you

Your soul ain’t a toy, you ain’t dealin’ wit’ a boy
Feel emptiness inside, I can fill that void
When you spend time wit’ your woman and listen
It shines more than any baguette diamond can glisten
I can’t impress you with the cars and the wealth
‘Cause any woman with will and drive can get it herself
I’d rather show you it’s heartfelt, make your heart melt
And prove to you you’re more important than anything else
Worthwhile, special like my first child
When I see your face it’s always like the first time
Our eyes met, I knew we’d be together in a tri-jet
I wanna give you things that I didn’t buy yet
Hold you, mold you, don’t know, let me show you
Ain’t no tellin’ what we could grow to
Let it be known, I told you
And I’mma be there for whatever you go through, my love is true

He don’t understand you like I do (No, he don’t, no, he don’t)
No, he’ll never make love to you like I do
So give it to me (Ooh)
‘Cause I can show you ‘bout a real love (Show you ‘bout a real love)
And I can promise anything that I do
Is just to satisfy you

Don’t let him sing you a sad song (No, baby)
Waiting for love like this too long
(You don’t have to wait, you don’t have to wait on him, baby)
All that you need I can give you (You don’t have to wait, you don’t have to wait on)
I do (You don’t have to wait on him)
To satisfy you

I’m the light when you can’t see
I’m that air when you can’t breathe
I’m that feelin’ when you can’t leave
Some doubt, some believe, some lie, cheat and deceive
So it’s only you and me
When you weak, I’ll make you strong, here’s where you belong
I ain’t perfect, but I promise I won’t do you wrong
Keep you away from harm, my love is protected
I’ll wrap you in my arms so you’ll never feel neglected
I’ll just make you aware of what we have is rare
In the moment of despair, I’m the courage when you scared
Loyal, down for you, soon as I saw you
Wanted to be there ‘cause I could hold it down for you
Be around for you, plant seeds in the soil
Make love all night, bendin’ bed coils
You a queen, therefore I treat you royal
This is all for you ‘cause I simply adore you

He don’t understand you like I do (Baby, he don’t understand you, you like I do)
No, he’ll never make love (I do) to you like I do (He will never make sweet love to you)
So give it to me (Bring it to me, baby)
‘Cause I can show you ‘bout a real love (Show you ‘bout a real love)
And I can promise anything (Oh) that I do
Is just to satisfy you

He don’t understand you like I do (No, he don’t, no, he don’t)
No, he’ll never make love (I do) to you like I do (He will never make sweet love to you)
So give it to me
‘Cause I can show you ‘bout a real love (I could show you ‘bout a real love)
And I can promise anything (Promise anything) that I do
Is just to satisfy you

[nycwriters]

On the eve of the millennial elections, set to occur in the persistent glow of a record-setting economic expansion, Americans are being told that they’ve “never had it so good.” The key evidence for this common elite judgment is a plethora of stunning data on America’s rising tide of affluence. As the Chicago Tribune recently reported, “the average size of a new home has expanded from 1,500 square feet to 2,190 square feet, and the number of cars has risen from one car for every two Americans age 16 or older to one car for each driving-age individual. The number of Americans taking cruises each year has risen from 500,000 to 6,5 million; the production of recreational vehicles has soared from 3,000 to 239,000; and the number of amusement parks has leaped from 363 to 1,164. We are attending more symphonies, plays, concerts, and sporting events, buying more boats and loading up on electronics, from cell phones and computers to video recorders and microwave ovens. The list goes on and on.” Citing these and other statistics of euphoric consumerism, the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank’s chief economist Michael Cox told the Tribune, “every aspect of life [in America] is better.”

Seeking to draw election-year meaning from this “better life,” some journalists and pundits see it as the main reason that Americans seem uninterested in the presidential campaign. In an age of deep material satisfaction and relative peace, the argument goes, there are few significant issues dividing the American people. According to the Pew Center, voter turnout will be low in November because prosperity has made Americans content with the status quo. Political indifference and superficial elections are the price we pay for being so happy.



Economic Boom and Social Recession

The problem is that American’s aren’t really all that joyful, historically speaking. According to surveys conducted by the University of Michigan and the National Opinion Research Center, levels of happiness and unhappiness in the United States have remained essentially constant for the last 40 years. Retired Yale political scientist Michael Lane, author of The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (2000), finds that Americans today are no happier than in 1948, when average per capita income in the United States was one-third of its present level. He reports an advancing wave of American sadness, pointing to increasing clinical depression, widespread distrust, and declining ties between individuals and families, friends, and community. His concerns are echoed by social-psychology professor David Myers in his The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in a Land of Plenty (2000). “Despite increasing affluence,” writes Myers, “Americans are becoming more miserable.” Myers concludes that Americans are mired in a “social recession” in the middle of an economic boom. These findings call to mind the purported and notorious comment of a Brazilian general in 1970. Reflecting on Brazil’s “economic miracle,” the general, by Noam Chomsky’s recent recollection, said that “the economy’s doing fine, it’s just the people that aren’t.”



Bad Culture

How to explain mass melancholy in the midst of America’s supposed prosperity? Cox is incapable of grasping the possibility that there might be more to life than the quest for material goods. He can only wonder, “Is it just human nature to complain even when things are good?”

A different answer is proposed by cultural conservative Edward Bennett, Reagan’s former education secretary and father of the moralistic “Index of Leading Cultural Indicators.” Bennett thinks that Americans are sad because they are experiencing affluence within the context of a culture dominated by the excessive materialism and radical individualism of the horrid 1960s. For Bennett, “it’s the culture, stupid,” and that culture is very, very bad, producing an epidemic of divorce, illegitimacy, drug usage, crime, hyper-sexualized media, single-parent families, violence, disrespect for elites, and general narcissism. An expression of this bad culture, Bennett argued in The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals (1999), was Americans’ “failure” to back the Republican campaign to impeach the president. According to Bennett, this scandalous dereliction was based partly on the dangerous idea that a booming economy excuses the president’s moral shortcomings. Bennett bitterly described Americans’ thinking in the following terms: “If the people are prosperous, the president must be doing a good job.”

But of course Bennett was too quick in his judgment, which he shares with both Cox and Clinton, that American capitalism was making “the people” prosperous. Beneath the booming Dow and rising GDP, the U.S. economy in the year Bennett’s book came out generated the second highest poverty rate and the worst mal-distributions of wealth and income in the industrialized world. Twenty percent of America’s children lived under the poverty level while the top 1 percent of the population owned nearly 40 percent of the country’s net worth. Meanwhile, Americans grumbled with reason about chronic overwork and about the domination of their political system by the nation’s increasingly wealthy economic elite. This list, too, goes on and on.



The Anti-Modernist Explanation

In Zola’s Germinal, the wealthy but miserable company manager Hennenbeau finds his mansion besieged by angry workers screaming, “Bread, bread, we want bread!” “Idiots!,” mutters Hennenbeau, “do you think I’m happy? Do you think that’s enough?” Hennebau’s line provides a useful introduction to a better interpretation of Myers’s “American paradox.”

A standard sociological explanation repeats the established truisms that money can’t buy you happiness and that modern society is alienating. As any social psychology 201 student should know on final exam day, money offers diminished happiness returns once people attain enough to escape poverty. Money boosts the morale of the impoverished but people’s sense of well-being levels off once they exit the realm of hardship.

[nycwriters]

At the same time, the quest for money and related accouterments is alienating. As has been documented in a long tradition of sociological literature that dates at least from David Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd, Americans drive themselves to despair and loneliness with their pursuit of material goods and social status in the corporate state. Working long and speeded-up hours for distant corporate overlords in electronic offices that are two traffic jams removed from solitary pseudo-communities, Americans feel overextended and alone. Cut off from family and other basic support networks, their lives seem drained of existential meaning. They seek human connectedness through the virtual electronic community. The unsatisfying result—an increase, not a reduction, of anxiety—is predictable. Prozac and other mood-altering substances arrive to adjust alienated masses to the shocking disjuncture between human need and modern (or it is post-modern?) reality. The modern (bureaucratic and capitalist) society has bred the “disenchantment of the world” prophesied by that precocious post-modernist Max Weber.

This is the basic thesis of Adbuster gurus Kalle Lasn and Bruce Grierson in a recent Utne Reader article titled “America the Blue.” “What’s the point,” they ask, “of living in the most dynamic and affluent nation on earth if you’re feeling sad and anxious a lot of the time?” For Lasn and Grierson, “the modern world” may have brought “unprecedented levels of prosperity” but it “is responsible for the current epidemic of sadness” in America. Things are better, they suggest, in less prosperous and less modern regions of the planet. With no apparent discomfort over national and cultural differences in mental health definition and monitoring, they report that “depression in China is three times less common than in the West. Worldwide,” they claim, “depression is increasing most quickly among the young and well off.”

But like Bennett’s reactionary cultural thesis, this explanation tends to leave out the significant number of people living on the razor’s edge, materially speaking, in “the most affluent nation on earth.” The anti-modernist interpretation too often shares the cultural conservatives’ false assumption that America is a “land of plenty” for all of its inhabitants. At its worst, their thesis rationalizes existing class and global inequalities by seeming to uphold the virtue of poverty against the spiritual hollowness of comfort. Of course, few alienated, affluent anti-modernists would trade places with the poor and the risk of suffering from post-materialist melancholy is one that most poor people would be willing to take if given the chance.



A Social-Democratic Alternative

All of which creates an interesting opening for Fordham University sociologist Marc Miringoff’s take on American life and politics at millennium’s turn. For the last 13 years, Miringoff and his fellow researchers at Fordham’s Institute for Innovation in Social Policy have been tracking what they call the social health of the United States. “If we closely monitor economic events by means of such measures as the GDP and the Dow Jones Average, if we even track the weather and the results of professional sports on a daily basis,” asks Miringoff, “should we not be monitoring just as carefully the combined impact of such problems as infant mortality, teen suicide, poverty, and the availability of affordable housing?”

Driven by the democratic spirit of that well-formulated question, Miringoff et al. have been monitoring 16 “leading social health indicators.” Their list includes child abuse, child poverty, high school dropout rates, average weekly earnings, unemployment, health insurance coverage, senior citizen poverty, health insurance for the elderly, food stamp coverage, access to affordable housing, and the gap between rich and poor. Exploring these all-too forgotten indicators, the researchers integrate the available data to produce a combined index of the “social well-being of American society.” In doing so, they are less concerned with the post-modern plight of the affluent than they are with how modern society distributes basic social and economic resources to all of its citizens.

It’s an interesting approach. While standard elite measures like the Index of Leading Economic Indicators have long synthesized standard economic statistics to report big economic changes, basic social data is rarely integrated to signal big transformations in American social experience.

The results of the Fordham Institute’s last report prior to the elections are anything but sanguine about the American experience. In 1997, the last year for which comprehensive data are available, the Institute’s Index of Social Health for the United States declined 1.3 percent to 46 out of a possible 100. More broadly, Miringoff reports that the social health of America in the 1990s is far below past levels. Since 1970, the annual U.S. social health index has stayed the same twice, improved ten times, and declined fifteen times. Especially disturbing are Miringoff’s findings that three indicators reached their lowest level since 1970: health insurance, food stamp coverage, and the gap between rich and poor (the difference between the percent distribution of aggregate income received by the top fifth and the bottom fifth of families). Economic growth and social health, Miringoff argues, have moved in opposite directions since the mid-1970s. “It used to be that a rising tide lifted all boats,” he says, “but at a certain point during the 1970s, per capita income and social health split apart.” Between 1970 and 1997, while the GDP grew by 113 percent, the Fordham index fell by 35 percent.

If there’s a master trend in Miringoff’s report it is the worsening distribution of wealth since the 1970s, something which Miringoff sees as a reflection partly of “the loss of steady, well-paid jobs with benefits for less skilled, blue-collars workers.” That finding is consistent with radical claims that the Reagan and Clinton booms have been predicated on reduced living and working standards for millions of working people. But Miringoff is no chronicler or theoretician of top-down class warfare. Foreswearing any particular ideological or partisan perspective, he limits his judgment to the fairly incontestable conclusion—one that both a Bennett and a Chomsky could share—that “economic growth alone does not improve the quality of life of American society.” Since the early-to-mid 1970s, writes Miringoff, “what has occurred in the realm of economic growth has not been the same as what has happened in the social arena. In fact the two measures are reflecting two different aspects of American life.”

Miringoff leaves it to radicals to argue (and I do) that recent capitalist expansion is built on a deepening social recession for the non-wealthy. Tired of America’s woefully inadequate social statistics being “kicked around like political footballs” in the U.S., Miringoff is content to advance the cause of improved information on the nation’s social well-being.

[nycwriters]

Two Americas

Still, by looking at child poverty, wage rates, affordable housing, food stamps, and distribution issues, Miringoff suggests a class-sensitive narrative, one that is more consistent with a Marxian approach than with the Weberian tale of post-modern disenchantment with generalized uber-prosperity. “It’s a story,” Miringoff recently told the Tribune, “of a lot of Americans not quite making ends meet as readily as one might think in a time of prosperity.” The picture that emerges from Miringoff’s more social and economic approach to American malaise is one of two very different Americas: the rich and the poor.

While Miringoff’s data helps explain the under-reported phenomenon of sadness among the non-affluent, it may also explain some of privileged people’s more widely advertised disenchantment. Inequality and poverty can be alienating even for the relatively well-off, many of whom wish to live under conditions of community health and stability that are undermined by class polarization. “Survivor” entertained millions of TV viewers this summer, but it doesn’t offer a particularly attractive model of daily social experience even for people who have survived quite well in material terms. If voter turnout is low in November, Miringoff doesn’t think it will be because Americans are satisfied. It will be because many Americans feel that neither party is really addressing the symptoms of declining social health.



Toward a New Measure of Success

The Fordham index needs to be broadened to include environmental measures, racism (rigorous residential segregation indices developed by Douglass S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton are suited for some sort of inclusion after 2000 census data arrives), gender discrimination, incarceration rates, civic participation, working hours (Americans are currently the most overworked people in the industrialized world), and the disproportionate political influence exercised by concentrated wealth (the main reason that Miringoff’s and others’ social health concerns are so largely unaddressed by policymakers). It is disappointing that Miringoff can’t muster any data from the last two to three years—a gap that limits his study’s political and policy impact. Still, Miringoff and the Fordham Institute deserve major credit for making a serious effort to produce and publicize what is in essence (declarations of ideological nonpartisanship notwithstanding) a left alternative to the hegemonic Index of Leading Economic Indicators and to Bennett’s reactionary cultural measures. American policymakers and propagandists are too quick to boast about the success and prosperity of a nation that leads the industrialized world in child poverty and inequality.

For some time now, every other industrialized state has published an annual social report that takes such “non-economic” factors of basic social experience into national account. The absence of such a report in the U.S. reflects the relative weakness of unions and left parties and the related exaggerated influence of Big Money in the U.S. Someday, perhaps, that will change, permitting an expanded and otherwise updated version of the Fordham index to enter the corridors of substantive policy discussion. In the meantime, progressives should propose a cure for disenchanted and authenticity-challenged members of the upper-quintile. America’s affluent victims of post-materialist despair should become part of a local social or environmental justice organization. By joining, say, a living-wage campaign, they will achieve new community connectedness, challenging the alienating Weberian tendencies of “modern” society. At the same time they will be attacking the more Marxist indignities foisted on the entire population by a political-economic system whose leaders refuse to acknowledge the connection between an economic boom that disproportionately benefits the wealthy few and a social recession that deepens the pain of so many other Americans. Z

[JesusTitties]

i just flashed my weener on webcam in a teen webcam room and got banned for three days

[sparticle]

Chapter 1
Theory and motivation
Something yet of doubt remains ...
How Nature, wise and frugal, could commit
Such disproportions

The goal of particle physicists is to describe the most fundamental constituents of the universe and the way in which they interact with one another. The standard model (SM) is the name given to the best current mathematical description of these subatomic particles and of the forces between them. The result of decades of theoretical and experimental research, it has been extremely successful at explaining and predicting the results a wide range of experiments, in some cases with extraordinary precision.

There are, however, good reasons to suppose that the SM is not the last word in our understanding of matter and forces. One notable shortcoming is that it does not include the gravitational force. This precludes it from describing interactions at arbitrarily high energies, far beyond the reach of our current particle accelerators.

The huge difference in the strengths of the electroweak and gravitational forces leads to two vastly different length scales in the universe - the scale of the atoms and that of the stars. The disparity in scales which baffled and inspired Milton hundreds of years ago continues to cause anxiety to many theorists today1. The unexpectedly small mass of the Higgs particle is one such problem, and is presented in this chapter as part of the motivation for introducing supersymmetry to the standard model.


1.1 The standard model
1.1.1 Particles and interactions
The SM describes all matter and interactions in terms of fundamental point-like particles. These have no spatial extension but do carry internal angular momentum which is characterised by the spin quantum number, s. The matter component of the theory consists of particles which have s=[ 1/2]. The forces between the matter particles are mediated by other particles which have integer spin.

The fundamental fermions can be divided into two types, according to whether or not they can interact via the strong nuclear force. Those which respond to the strong force are known as quarks, and are confined by it in more complicated objects known as hadrons. The other basic fermions, the leptons, have only weak-nuclear or electromagnetic charges, and so can exist as free particles.

Each of the three SM forces is associated with the local symmetry operations of a particular Lie group. The quanta of the forces are spin-1 particles known as gauge bosons.

The strong force, which holds the nucleus together, is described by the theory of . Each quark is a `colour' triplet under the gauge group, SU(3)C. The vector bosons which mediate this force are known as gluons, and form the octet representation. Since SU(3) is a non-Abelian group the gluons themselves have colour charges. The interactions between these force carriers leads to a rich and complex phenomenology.



families colorL,R T3L YL T3R YR Q=T3+Y

( u

d

) , ( c

s

) , ( t

b

) 3, [`(3)] [ 1/2]

-[ 1/2]

[ 1/6]

[ 1/6]

0

0

[ 2/3]

-[ 1/3]

[ 2/3]

-[ 1/3]


( ne

e-

) , ( nm

m-

) , ( nt

t-

) 1, 1 [ 1/2]

-[ 1/2]

-[ 1/2]

-[ 1/2]

0

0

0

-1

0

-1



Table 1.1: Gauge quantum numbers of the standard model fermions. T is the weak isospin, and T3 its third component. Y is the SU(1)Y hypercharge, and Q is the electric charge. The subscripts denote left and right handed Weyl spinors.
The other two forces - electromagnetism and the weak force - can be described in terms of the SU(2)L and U(1)Y groups of the unbroken weak and electromagnetic forces, and the corresponding charges of the fermions: weak isospin and hypercharge. The various charge quantum numbers of the quarks and leptons are given in table 1.1.

It is notable that there are three families of quarks and leptons, which transform identically under the gauge groups, but which have different masses. Ordinary matter consists only of the lighest two quarks (u and d) and the lighest charged lepton (the electron). The origin of the SM family structure remains mysterious, but clues may be found at the LHC (see sec. 4.7).


1.1.2 The description of mass
Since almost all observed particles are massive (see fig. 1.1), in order to complete the description of the particles and interactions given in sec. 1.1 one must add a mechanism for mass generation. Adding gauge boson mass terms by hand destroys the gauge symmetry of the lagrangian, and results in non-renormalizable theories.

A method of giving mass to vector bosons while maintaining gauge invariance at high energy was described by Higgs[9], Rout and Englert[10]. They considered a pair of real scalar fields, (j1 , j2), with a potential, V(j12+j22), that has a degenerate minimum. These scalar fields are coupled to a real vector field, Am. By considering small oscillations about a vacuum solution:
j1=0, j2=j0, with V¢(j02)=0, V¢¢(f02) > 0,
(1.1) it can be shown2 that the vector bosons receive an effective mass, m = ej0, where e is the coupling constant.

In becoming massive, the vector boson acquires a longitudinal degree of freedom which is taken from the scalar fields. The remaining degree of freedom produces a massive scalar excitation in Dj2 which represents the physical Higgs boson, h.

In the SM, it is through the Higgs mechanism that the electroweak bosons (W± and Z0) obtain their masses. The gauge group SU(2)×U(1), has gauge bosons Wmi, (i=1,2,3), and Bm, and coupling constants g and g¢ for the SU(2) and the U(1) parts respectively. The self-interactions of a complex scalar doublet field (the Higgs field), F º ( f+

f0

), cause spontaneous symmetry breaking, after which the new mass eigenstates are linear combinations of the original gauge eigenstates:
W± = (W1 -±iW2)/Ö2, Z=-BsinqW + W3cosqW
(1.2) with qW º tan-1(g¢/g). The masses of the gauge bosons are also linked by cosqW = MW / MZ at tree level.

The masses of the SM fermions are generated from Yukawa couplings to the Higgs doublet field, with the values of each coupling proportional to the mass. Since the mass eigenstates of the quarks are not the same as the weak eigenstates, charged weak interactions can cause transitions between generations. The same mixing matrix introduces a single complex phase which violates the combined symmetry CP, in which particles are exchanged for their anti-particles and the spacial coordinates are inverted.

It is worth noting that there is also now also good experimental evidence[11,12,13] that neutrinos have small ( few eV), but non-zero masses, which allow them to oscillate between different flavour eigenstates. However the mechanism by which neutrinos gain mass remains unclear. Neutrino masses can be incorporated into the SM in the same way as the other fermions, but alternative schemes exist3.



Figure
Figure 1.1: Mass values for SM particles, with their uncertainties. A lower limit is shown for the SM Higgs particle. Approximate upper limits on the neutrino masses are shown based on the direct limit on the mass of the electron neutrino. The photon is assumed to be massless.

1.1.3 The Higgs mass and the technical hierarchy problem
The Higgs boson is the only particle in the SM which has not yet been experimentally observed4.

The bare mass of a Higgs boson depends on the curvature of the scalar potential at its vacuum minimum, which is a parameter (rather than a prediction) of the SM.



Figure
Figure 1.2: The electroweak precision fit Dc2 = c2 - cmin2 as a function of the SM Higgs mass. The band represents the theoretical uncertainty from missing higher order corrections. The vertical band shows the region excluded by direct searches at 95% confidence. The dashed line was obtained using an alternative calculation of the coupling, a(MZ). From [16].
There are however bounds on the renormalized mass. By imposing the condition that the S-matrix to be unitary for the elastic scattering process W+W-® W+W-, the renormalized Higgs mass must be less than ([(8pÖ2)/(3GF)]) [ 1/2] » 1000 GeV[17]. Indeed global fits to electroweak data, which are sensitive to the logarithm of the Higgs mass through radiative corrections, tend to favour a light Higgs (see fig. 1.2).



Figure
Figure 1.3: 1-loop diagrams contributing to the effective Higgs (mass)2, from (a) fermion loop; (b) gauge boson loop; (c) scalar loop.
A problem arises because there are large radiative corrections to mbareh, through loop diagrams, such as those shown in fig. 1.3. These corrections when summed result in divergences which grow quadratically with the cut-off scale, L. A fermion with mass mf and coupling lf to the Higgs field gives a contribution,
dMHF2 = |lf|2

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[sparticle]

16p2
[-2L2 + 6 mf2 ln(L/mf) + ¼]
(1.3)
to the square of the Higgs mass through diagrams such as fig. 1.3a. For a scalar loop, such as fig. 1.3(b), there is a similar correction,
dMHS2 = ls

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

16p2
[L2 - 2 ms2 ln(L/ms) + ¼] .
(1.4)


If the SM is considered to be the ultimate theory of the universe, then this divergence is not necessarily a problem. However there are good reasons to suppose that the SM will not be the last word in our understanding of the fundamental interactions. For example, the omission of gravity from the theory will become important as one approaches the Planck scale MPl =Ö{[((h/2p) c)/(GN)]} ~ 1019 GeV. While the Planck energy regime is far from being realised by any experiment, it places a limit on the validity of the SM, changing its status to that of an effective field theory, valid only below a certain energy level.

Setting the cut-off L of the integrals to the Planck scale forces the natural scale of the Higgs mass-squared to huge values around MPl2. In order to end up with a physical mass-squared near the electroweak scale, ~ (100 GeV)2, as demanded by the arguments at the start of this section, one must fix the bare mass extremely precisely to about one part in 1016. Even if L, the scale at which new physics enters, is reduced to the unification scale at about 1015 GeV (see sec. 1.2.2), a striking cancellation is required over twelve orders of magnitude. This need for extreme fine-tuning is known as the technical hierarchy problem.

It is however possible to avoid such delicate and artificial parameter fixing. Notice that sign of the term quadratic in L is opposite in eq. 1.3 as compared to eq. 1.4. This is because the Feynmann rules require a factor of -1 for each fermion loop in the diagram. The cancellation introduces the possibility that the dangerous divergences5 can be systematically cancelled, provided that each of the SM fermions are accompanied by two complex scalars with ls=|lf|2.

Such companions and couplings are an essential consequence of models which respect a special symmetry principle - supersymmetry - which is the subject of sec. 1.2.


1.2 Supersymmetry
The theory of supersymmetry hypothesises a relationship between particles which have integer and half-integer spins. It predicts that particles should come in multiplets containing an equal number of fermionic and bosonic degrees of freedom.

This section promotes the main motivations for extending the Standard Model to include supersymmetry. For a more detailed theoretical description of the supersymetry algebra, and of supersymmetric field theory, the reader is directed towards the pedagogical introductions upon which much of the following discussion is based[18,19,20,21,22,23,24].


1.2.1 Overview
Physicists are already familiar with theories which have the same properties after such operations as translation in time or space, or rotations in space. Modern physics also makes use of symmetry under the relativistic Lorentz boosts, and gauge transformations. Supersymmetry is an extension to these existing symmetry principles, and predicts exact relationships between particles with different spins.

To make a stronger statement, it is one of very few extensions available. This was shown by Coleman and Mandula[25,26], who considered the possible symmetries of the scattering matrix. They proved that a theory which describes a finite number of point particles types, which obeys the Lorentz transformations, and in which particles scatter in a physically sensible manner, may only have internal symmetries (like gauge symmetries), and the symmetries of the Poincaré group (i.e. Lorentz boosts, translations and rotations). This restriction is known as the Coleman-Mandula `no-go' theorem.

The only known extension[26] of the allowed symmetries is the possibility of adding operators which relate bosons to fermions - the supersymmetry generating operators, Q. Aficionados favour the argument that since nature has chosen to respect gauge and Lorentz symmetries there is every reason to believe that the supersymmetry should also be physically relevant.

The generating operators change the spin of a single particle state by ±[ 1/2], and in doing so transform bosonic states into fermionic states and vice versa. Symmetry under these operations means that for every bosonic degree of freedom in the theory, there must be a corresponding fermionic degree of freedom. Such theories will then naturally provide the companions required to cancel the divergences in the Higgs mass, which were described in sec. 1.1.3.

In the simplest case there is only one distinct copy of the generators, Q, Qf, and each particle state is accompanied by exactly one other state with spin differing by a half. The more general cases with N ³ 2 typically contain super-partners of fermions with opposite chirality, so are difficult to reconcile with the V-A weak couplings in the SM. Hence only simple (N=1) supersymmetry can be physically relevant at low scales.

It is theoretically appealing that if exists, it is intimately connected with the structure of space-time, as can be seen from the anticommutation equations of the generating operators,
{Qa, Qfb}=2(sm)ab Pm, {Qa, Qb}=0,
(1.5)
where Q and Qf are two-component complex spinor operators, Pm is the four-momentum operator, and the components of s = (1,[( ®) || ( s)]) are the identity and the Pauli 2×2 matrices. The generator, Qa and its hermitian conjugate Qaf, commute with the momentum operators,
[Pm,Q]=[Pm,Qf]=0
(1.6)
while under Lorentz transformations they transforms as Weyl spinors.

The supersymmetry generator Q, can be assumed to commute with the generators of the SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) gauge group6. The guage interactions and charges of the superpartners will then precisely cancel the unwanted quadratic Higgs divergences discussed in sec. 1.1.3.


1

[sparticle]

.2.2 Grand unified theories
There is another piece of circumstantial evidence in favour of which is related to the hope that all three SM forces might eventually be described in terms of a single grand unified theory (GUT).


Figure
(a)
Figure
(b)

Figure 1.4: The running of the SU(3), SU(2) and U(1) gauge couplings (a) without and (b) with N=1 supersymmetry, according to one loop renormalization group equations. a1 º (5/3)aY, where aY is the hypercharge coupling in the conventional normalisation. The bands reflect contemporary experimental uncertainties. From [27].
The aim of a GUT is to embed the SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) gauge groups in a simple group, which is spontaneously broken at some high scale. Above that scale the couplings will be equal, while below it each will run according to its . These differential equations describe how the value of the gauge couplings change depending on the scale at which they they are observed. From a low-energy perspective a GUT enthusiast would hope to observe all three of the SM gauge couplings tend towards a single point somewhere between the electroweak and Planck scales.

The running of the couplings depends on the particles which are accessable at any particular scale and so will be affected by the addition of new particles. Supporters of supersymmetry therefore consider it a great success that the effect of adding particles near the electroweak scale is a significant improvement to the unification of the couplings, as shown in fig. 1.4.


1.2.3 The minimal supersymmetric standard model
If supersymmetry is physically relevant then all known particles should have super-partners, known as `sparticles'. This section describes the smallest particle content for a supersymmetric theory in which the SM can be embedded, known as the .

It is natural to ask if any of the particles of the SM might already be superpartners of one another. The only SM particles with spin differing by a half and with the same gauge quantum numbers are the Higgs boson and the neutrino. However if these were related by a supersymmetry transformation the equivalent of the SM Yukawa interactions would violate lepton number. So in constructing a supersymmetric extension of the SM each known particle must exist in a multiplet alongside a new `sparticle' partner.

It is most convenient to describe the in terms of its interaction eigenstates, and at a high energy scale where supersymmetry breaking is small. The particles can be then treated as approximately massless. At low energies, both the SM particles and their partners will aquire mass through the supersymmetric version of the Higgs mechanism. In sec. 1.2.5 some of the consequences of breaking are summarised.



Figure
Figure 1.5: The massless N=1 supermultiplets. The blobs represent individual supermultiplets, each of which has two components with spins differing by one half. Supermultiplets can be constructed by the application of the generator operators Q and Qf.


Particles spin 0 spin 1 SU(3), SU(2), U(1)

squarks, quarks Q (_L _L) (uL dL) (3, 2, 1)
(× 3 families) [`u] [u\tilde]R* uRf ([`(3)], 1, -2)
[`d] [d\tilde]R* dRf ([`(3)], 1, 1)
sleptons, leptons L ( _L) (n eL) (1, 2, -1)
(× 3 families) [`e] [e\tilde]R* eRf ([`(1)], 1, 1)
Higgs, Higgsinos Hu (Hu+ Hu0) ([H\tilde]u+ [H\tilde]u0) (1, 2, +1)
Hd (Hd0 Hd-) ([H\tilde]d+ [H\tilde]d0) (1, 2, -1)

Table 1.2: The chiral supermultiplets, each of which contains both a spin-zero (scalar) and spin-half (Weyl spinor) component. The Higgs fields are given a subscript label depending on whether they give mass to u-type or d-type quarks.
The possible massless multiplets for N=1 are shown in fig. 1.5. Into this framework must be placed the SM fermions, vector gauge bosons, and a fundamental scalar particle - the Higgs boson. Only two types of such supermultiplet are required to contain all of the standard model particles, these are the chiral and the gauge multiplets.

The SM fermions are placed in chiral multiplets (table 1.2), each of which contains both a spin-zero and a spin-half component. There is another possibility - putting the quarks and leptons in gauge supermultiplets - but this would introduce new vector fields, and therefore additional gauge groups.

Massive quarks and leptons are constructed from pairs of Weyl spinors with opposite chirality. This means that in a supersymmetric theory, every massive quark and lepton must be accompanied by a pair of scalar partners, which are known as known as squarks and sleptons respectively. Supersymmetric partners of known particles are denoted by placing a tilde over the corresponding particle, for example [e\tilde]- for a selectron.

Though the scalar partners of the SM fermions are often given the labels `right' and `left' they obviously have no `handedness' themselves. Instead the label refers to the helicity of their respective fermion partners, so for example the `right up squark' is the scalar partner of the uR Weyl fermion. The exception to this nomenclature is the third generation of quarks and leptons, which, because of their large Yukawa couplings have larger left-right mixing. Thus the stops, sbottoms and staus are more usually denoted with subscripts 1 and 2 to denote the lighter and heavier state respectively.



Particles spin 1 spin 1 SU(3), SU(2), U(1)

gluino, gluon [g\tilde] g (8, 1, 0)
wino, W bosons [W\tilde]±, [W\tilde]0 W±, W0 (1, 3, 0)
bino, B bosons [B\tilde]0 B0 (1, 1, 0)

Table 1.3: The gauge supermultiplets, each of which contains both a spin-half (Weyl spinor) and a spin-one (vector) component.
The gauge supermultiplets are the equivalent of the SM gauge bosons - the minimal additional fields necessary to create a theory which is both supersymmetric and gauge invariant. The gauge multiplets are listed in table 1.3. In addition to a vector boson, each gauge multiplet contains a spin-half partner, known as a gaugino. Those corresponding to unbroken SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) are called the gluinos, winos and bino respectively.

Any Higgs bosons must belong to a chiral supermultiplet, since only they contain scalars. A single Higgs doublet f is sufficient for the SM, as both f and its complex conjugate field f* can also be used when writing a lagrangian density, to give mass to the quarks of different hypercharge. However a supersymmetric lagrangian densty must not contain terms with both f, and f*, and so a second Higgs doublet is required, with the opposite hypercharge in order to give mass to both up-type and down-type quarks. Another way of seeing this is that the charged W bosons must have supersymmetric partners after spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking, which would be impossible with only a single Higgs isodoublet. A more technical discussion of a third reason is given in [19].

The new Higgs doublet leads to additional massive scalar bosons. A pair of complex doublets has eight degrees of freedom. After electroweak symmetry breaking removes three degrees of freedom, there remain five physical Higgs bosons: a charged pair of scalars, H±, a pair of neutral scalars H, h, and a neutral pseudoscalar A. Their spin-half partners, the Higgsinos, mix with the winos and binos to form mass eigenstates: the charged Higgsinos and winos create two `charginos' (^ _1,2). The two neutral Higgsinos, the neutral wino and the bino also mix, to form four electrically uncharged `neutralinos' (_1,2,3,4^0).


1.2.4 R-parity
The as described in the previous section does not distinguish between quark/lepton fields and Higgs fields. As a result baryon- and lepton-number violating interactions are not excluded.

The superpotential, from which the supersymmetric lagrangian density is constructed, can contain the gauge-invariant and renormalizable terms:
WRPV = 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2
lijk Li Lj -

E


k
+l¢ijkLi Qj -

D


k
+ 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[funkytuba]

Configuring Rollback Segments
Automatic undo management is the preferred way of handling rollback space. Automatic undo management lets you allocate undo space in a single undo tablespace, instead of distributing undo space in a set of statically allocated rollback segments. The creation and allocation of space among the undo segments is handled automatically by the Oracle server.

With rollback segments, one or more tablespaces are created; rollback segments are manually created in those tablespaces. The number and size of the rollback segments must be determined by the DBA.

Determining the Number and Size of Rollback Segments
The size of rollback segments can affect performance. Rollback segment size is determined by the rollback segment's storage parameter values. Your rollback segments must be large enough to hold the rollback entries for your transactions. As with other objects, avoid dynamic space management in rollback segments.

Table 18-1 shows some general guidelines for choosing how many rollback segments to allocate based on the number of concurrent transactions on your database. These guidelines are appropriate for most application mixes.

Table 18-1 Choosing the Number of Rollback Segments
Number of Current Transactions (n) Number of Rollback Segments Recommended
n < 16
4

16 <= n < 32
8

32 <= n
n/4


Use the SET TRANSACTION statement to assign transactions to rollback segments of the appropriate size based on the recommendations in the following sections. If you do not explicitly assign a transaction to a rollback segment, then Oracle automatically assigns it to a rollback segment.

For example, the following statement assigns the current transaction to the rollback segment oltp_13:

SET TRANSACTION USE ROLLBACK SEGMENT oltp_13


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note:
If you are running multiple concurrent copies of the same application, then be careful not to assign the transactions for all copies to the same rollback segment. This leads to contention for that rollback segment.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Also, monitor the shrinking, or dynamic deallocation, of rollback segments based on the OPTIMAL storage parameter.

[sparticle]

2
l¢¢ijk -

U


i
-

D


j
-

D


k
+ki Li Hu
(1.7)
which is expressed in terms of superfields, each of which contains both partners in the super-multiplet. For example L2 is the muon isodoublet superfield, containing the left-handed muon, its neutrino, and both of their scalar superpartners. Hu, L and Q are isodoublets while [`U] and [`D] are isosinglets. Gauge indices have been suppressed and i,j,k are familiy indicies.

The first three terms in eq. 1.7 are Yukawa couplings between the matter superfields. The last term is the mixing term between the Higgs and lepton doublets. When contracted through the appropriate gauge matrices, lijk must be antisymmetric under i« j and ^ antisymmetric under j « k. WRPV therefore adds 9+27+9+3=48 new parameters.




Picture Omitted

Figure 1.6: Example of a Feynman diagram in which a pair of non-zero R-parity violating couplings leads to squark-mediated proton decay, p® p0 e+.
In the perturbative standard model both bayron number and lepton number are conserved7. Baryon number assignments are +[ 1/3] for (s)quarks, -[ 1/3] for anti-(s)quarks and zero for all other particles. Likewise total lepton number L=+1 is given to (s)leptons and -1 for their anti-particles. Non-zero values of the couplings l, l¢, and k violate total L by one unit, while ^ , violates B by one unit.

Products of baryon- and lepton-violating terms are strongly constrained by experiment. For example, if both l and l¢¢ terms were present and of order unity, then proton decay would take place at a rate similar to that of nuclear beta decay. On dimensional grounds, one can estimate that:
G(proton® e+p0) » (l¢11k)2 (l¢¢11k)2

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

m[q\tilde]4
m5proton
(1.8)
However the proton is remarkably stable - the partial lifetime t/B(p® e+ p0) for the decay shown in fig. 1.6 is greater than 1033 years[29]. Since the squarks are required to be light enough to solve the heirarchy problem, the product of couplings l¢11kl¢¢11k must be very small.

The most extreme solution is the imposition of the discrete global multiplicative symmetry:
RP=(-1)3B+L+2s
(1.9)
where s is the spin of the particle. This combination of quantum numbers ensures that standard model particles have RP =+1 while their superpartners have RP =-1. Such a symmetry excludes the terms in eq. 1.7, and so circumvents fast proton decay problem.

In models, sparticles can only be produced in pairs and must decay to states which also contain an odd number of sparticles, with the result that the is stable. Each event must then produce an even number of s which, being weakly-interacting, escape detection and often generate a large missing transverse momentum (p / 0>1 p _T). This signature has been exploited by many analyses proposed for the LHC [30], since it provides a clean separation between events and the SM background. However, the incomplete measurement of the final state makes the reconstruction of the mass spectrum rather difficult.

A massive particle which is cosmologically stable will have relics from the big bang which contribute to the invisible dark matter of the universe. A discussion of the cosmological relic density of neutralinos is given in sec. 3.5.1.

However the imposition of R-parity conservation is rather ad hoc, and is not the only solution. To prevent fast proton decay through the terms in eq. 1.7, it is sufficient that either lepton or baryon number are conserved8. This can be seen in eq. 1.8, where the strong limit requires only the product of B- and L-violating couplings to be small.


If is violated in nature then the will decay, and the collider signatures can be very different from the conserving case. signatures are investigated further in chapter 4.


1.2.5 Supersymmetry breaking


Figure
Figure 1.7: Example sparticle spectra for three different examples of high-energy theories with particular choices of parameters. From [31]
In a theory in which supersymmetry was exact and unbroken, the properties and interactions of the superpartners would be precisely determined. Therefore most of the differences between supersymmetric models can be traced to the manner in which becomes broken in the normal vacuum state.

From an experimentalist's viewpoint supersymmetry is only interesting if it can produce observable experimental effects. Since existing experiments have so far failed to find evidence for supersymmetric partners it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that sparticles (if they do indeed exist) must have large (O TeV) masses.


A general feature of most realistic models is that is dynamically (spontaneously) broken by a gauge coupling which becomes strong at some scale MS. The known quarks and leptons must be neutral under this group otherwise there would be at least one light sparticle[32], so strong supersymmetry breaking must occur in a `hidden' sector of fields isolated from ordinary particles and interactions.

breaking must be communicated to the observed particles by some interaction felt by both the visible and hidden sectors. The most commonly discussed methods are through flavour-blind gravitional (mSUGRA), or gauge (GMSB) interactions. A more recent alternative, in which there is no direct contribution from the hidden sector (AMSB), is discussed in chapter 3. Some example sparticle spectra for these models are shown in fig. 1.7.


1.2.6 An experimental perspective on theoretical models
It is extremely difficult to search for new physics without considering what that physics may be. It is therfore instructive for experimentalists to use theoretical models to direct their studies.
Indirect searches for supersymmetry generally measure quantities which are calculable in the SM and can be measured with a very high degree of accuracy. These can be sensitivity to new physics through loop corrections from virtual particles, including those which have not yet been observed directly. Such experiments look for deviations from known physics, so the methods employed are relatively independent of any underlying model.

Precision results which are in agreement with the SM are also very valuable, since they can strongly constrain theory. The measurements can be performed in a model-independant manner, and their values interpreted within the framework of particular models. A brief overview of the constraints on the `free parameters' of the minimal scenario are given in sec. 3.5.2 for measurements of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and in sec. 3.5.3 for the branching rate for the flavour-changing process B® Xs g.

The method of analysis and interpretation are rather different at collider experiments such as the LHC, where an enormous number of different measurements can be made. The experimentalist's dilemma is how to chose the variables which might be sensitive to new physics.


The situation is even more complicated because much of the information which could in principle help reconstruct collision events is necessarily lost. The properties of any particles produced have to be deduced from their stable decay products. For example decays which occur sequentially in less than about 10-14 of a second cannot be ordered in time. Ambiguities are also introduced from the experimental uncertainty in identifying particles, and most difficult of all, weakly interacting neutral particles do not interact with the experiment at all.


To assist the experimenter in finding discriminatory variables it is therefore valuable to consider the low-energy phenomenology predicted by various well-motivated theoretical models. But which models should be studied?

One possible approach is to parameterise one's ignorance, and to construct a general low-energy effective theory containing all physically reasonable terms. It might then be possible to simulate the expected results of collider experiments for each case.

In the case of supersymmetry searches such a strategy is confounded by the large dimensionality of the possible model space. In the alone there are 105 additional parameters[33] (not including the extra 48 in eq. 1.7) which describe masses, mixing angles and phases after general soft breaking. A coarse grid of 100 different values of each of these parameters would produce 153100 different points in model space. Since individual points require of the order of a day of computing time for even approximate simulation of a minimum number of events, the whole parameter space would require more than 10200 computer-days to model - obviously not a viable proposal.

A more pragmatic approach is to choose a subset of `typical' models which it is hoped will exhibit universal features such as the p / 0>1 p _T signature for supersymmetry. It is the importance of studying a representative set of models that motivates the analyses of R-parity violating and anomaly-mediated supersymmetry presented in part II.

[sparticle]

1.3 Summary
There are strong theoretical motivations for suspecting that supersymmetry might be a next step in our understanding of fundamental interactions:

it provides a solution to the technical hierarchy problem, since cancellations from super-partners prevent the Higgs boson from obtaining a huge mass;

it improves the prediction of the unification of gauge couplings at high scales and so helps in embedding the SM in a grand unified theory;

if R-parity is conserved then the lightest of the new supersymmetric particles can provide a cosmologically interesting contribution to the dark matter;

it may be a stepping stone towards a quantum theory of gravity;

the Colemann-Mandula theorem severely restricts the choice of other extensions to the standard model.

Despite these theoretical reasons, there is currently no good experimental evidence that is realized in nature. Yet whether or not one believes in supersymmetry few would argue that it is not important to search for it.
If supersymmetry is indeed the solution to the hierarchy problem, then partners of known particles must have masses at the TeV scale. This means that the next generation of particle colliders will produce particles, and the detectors will have the opportunity to uncover a new kind of matter.

[Avalon]

The Mind-Brain Identity Theory is the name usually, if somewhat misleadingly given to that form of psycho-physical materialism which holds, not that mind qua substance is the same independently existing substance as that anatomically distinguishable part of the human body known as the brain, but that mental events and mental processes are the very same events and processes as those patterns of brain activity with which they are known or strongly suspected to be correlated. It was only when it was stated in this form that psycho-physical materialism first became accepted as a defensible philosophical position. Nevertheless a quarter of a century was to elapse between the original statement of the mind-brain identity theory in the 1930's and its acceptance as a defensible philosophical position in the late 1950's.

I. Historical preliminaries

Boring

The earliest statement of the identity theory under the title was in Boring's book The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness published in 1933 . In that book Boring states his view as follows: "To the author a perfect correlation is identity. Two events that always occur together at the same time in the same place, without any temporal or spatial differentiation at all, are not two events but the same event. The mind-body correlations as formulated at present, do not admit of consideration as spatial correlation, so they reduce to matters of simple correlation in time. The need for identification is no less urgent in this case". (p.16). Boring's view did not command the serious attention either of philosophers or psychologists at the time for a number of reasons. As far as the psychologists were concerned behaviourism as a solution to and as a way out of methodological and philosophical problems within psychology had not been fully exploited and its limits and limitations discovered. As far as the philosophers were concerned, apart from the fact that Boring was writing as a psychologist for psychologists, the time was not yet ripe for the incorporation of such a revolutionary doctrine. The problem of identity and of referential identification had not yet moved into the forefront of discussion among the logicians. Frege's work on these topics was virtually unknown outside the confines of the Vienna Circle. Phenomenalism in the form of the so-called sense datum theory was riding high and logical behaviourism had hardly been conceived, let alone explored as an alternative solution to the mind-body problem. Boring moreover, was himself apparently committed to combining the identity theory with a phenomenalist account of sensory qualities which on Leibniz's principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles would commit him to the view that certain brain events are literally green, high pitched, warm, sour or putrid, which for a philosopher would constitute an immediate knock-down reductio ad absurdum of his position.

The philosophical background

Twenty five years later the philosophical climate in the English speaking world was very different. The crucial influence was that of the later work of Wittgenstein as set out in his posthumous Philosophical Investigations published in 1953. In the United States parallel developments were taking place amongst those members of the original Vienna circle like Carnap and more in particular Feigl .

This development had a number of consequences which were crucial for the subsequent restatement of the Mind-Brain Identity theory in the late 1950's. In the first place it led to a revival of interest in the work of Frege and in his distinction between sense and reference. This distinction is fundamental to the doctrine of contingent identity as developed by Feigl in his (1958) and by Smart in his (1959). Frege's work on sense and reference also underlies the interest in the problem of how we identify the referent of a descriptive expression or proper name and thus to Strawson's view which draws attention to the importance of spatio-temporal location in this respect and which seriously undermines the traditional view of the mind as an independently existing spiritual substance. This interest in the problem of referential identification in the context of the use of language for the purposes of inter-personal communication is the basis of Wittgenstein's private language argument. This argument of Wittgenstein's together with Austin's critique of the argument from illusion in his Sense and Sensibilia led to the dramatic collapse of phenomenalism and the Berkeleyan form of Idealism which is associated with it as defensible philosophical positions within the British philosophical tradition in the period immediately following the Second World War. The refutation of phenomenalism and the recognition that naive realism, the view that what we directly perceive are real spatially extended material objects in a three dimensionally extended material world, is a viable philosophical position was an essential prerequisite for the development of a philosophically defensible form of the mind-brain identity theory, since it is only when we recognise that the language we use to describe our private experiences and sensations is a metaphorical extension of a language whose basic function is to describe material objects and their properties as they exist and occur in a three dimensionally extended spatial world, that we can circumvent the objection that experiences have properties such as greenness, high pitch, warmth, sourness and putridity that no brain process could conceivably have. We have already suggested that it was this adherence to phenomenalism that led to the failure of Boring's original statement of the identity theory to gain widespread acceptance. It was also we would suggest, his failure to break away effectively from his deep-rooted phenomenalist prejudices which led to Feigl's recantation of his 1958 statement of the identity theory in the introduction to the reissue of that paper as a separate volume in 1967.

Wittgenstein's private language argument was also important as a factor in the development of a philosophically viable form of psycho-physical materialism in so far as it demonstrates that any language which is capable of serving as a medium for inter-personal communication must necessarily presuppose the existence of a spatially extended material world to which its basic concepts are referentially anchored. This leads to a rejection of the egocentric epistemology of Descartes and thereby undermines the formidable Cartesian argument for an independently existing spiritual substance. It also helped philosophers to recognise for the first time in three hundred years that the primary function of the psychological concepts of ordinary language is not to enable the individual to describe his own private experiences, but to enable him to characterise the mental capacities and propensities of other people and to explain the behaviour of others in terms of these capacities and propensities. Once we begin to ask what it means for him to know, believe, want or intend something instead of asking what it means for me to know, believe, want or intend something, logical behaviourism at least as an account of these mental state concepts, becomes almost irresistible. Wittgenstein himself gave a successful logical behaviourist analysis of what it means to understand something in terms of the ability to 'go on' correctly (1953, I, §143-155), as well as his less successful attempt at a logical behaviourist account of sensation (1953, I, §244).

However more important than his own specific contributions to the logical behaviourist view, was Wittgenstein's undoubted influence inspiring Ryle's exposition of this point of view in The Concept of Mind. Strictly speaking logical behaviourism, if taken to its logical conclusions, is an alternative and rival to materialism as an account of the mind-body relationship. For if and in so far as all we are doing when we use mental concepts is talking in a logically complex way about the publicly observable behaviour of human beings, it follows (a) that there is no separate class of mental states and events over and above behavioural events and behavioural dispositions and (b) that the relationship of mind to brain is simply a matter of the relatively unproblematic causal relationship between brain activity and overt behaviour. Nevertheless had it not been for the fact that Place and Smart had both been strongly influenced by Ryle's logical behaviourism and had both been impressed with how close this view comes to getting rid once and for all, of the private world of mental events, neither Smart (1959) nor Place (1956) would have ventured to explore the possibility that those aspects of mental life which had proved impermeable to the dispositional analysis which Ryle had used with such devastating effect elsewhere, might perhaps be rescued from the strange extra physical limbo to which Descartes had consigned them by postulating their identity with events and processes in the brain.

The Restatement of the Mind brain identity theory

The mind-brain identity theory in the form in which it became accepted as a serious philosophical thesis stems from three papers published in the late 1950's. The earliest of these was Place's paper 'Is consciousness a brain process?' (1956). This was followed in 1958 by Herbert Feigl's paper 'The "Mental" and the "Physical"' and in 1959 by J.J.C. Smart's paper 'Sensations

[nycwriters]

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid120/p266410513eec8a0b64c74c09a0b87f83/f86643e2.jpg

[masterofNone]

oh.

[rapscalious rob]

Monkeys, Barrel Of (UnReal)

More Fun Than A Barrel Full Of Monkeys

________________________________________

Author: Roger Hanna (rwhanna@iglobal.net)
Date: 1996/06/07
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An archaic game involving plastic monkeys, a plastic barrel and (presumably) plastic fun. Of more interest is the expression "more fun then a barrel full of monkeys", which interestingly enough seems to predate the rather mediocre game.

A considerable debate continues to rage about this phrase, with occasional drunken brawls livening the discussion from time to time. What, exactly, is so much fun about a barrel of monkeys? How many monkeys are in a barrel? What kind of monkey? What size of barrel? What sort of sandwich would a barrel monkey like? What color would the monkeys like the barrel painted? If they were to go over the Niagara Falls in that barrel, would it be fun? And do you have to be alive to have fun?

These and other earth shattering problems prompted the "1st Annual Monkey Barrel Conference" in Berne, Switzerland, on Dec 5, 1995. A number of things quickly became apparent:

1. The monkeys had to be alive and intact to have fun. A strong religious left movement pushed for a "bliss after death" ruling (and thence to overthrow the famous "Monkus Intactus" clause), but this was overruled by Green Peace and the Vatican.

2. The size of the barrel and the size of the monkey are both vital and totally irrelevant. It is instead crucial to maintain the proper ratio of monkey size to barrel size. The Phrase Founder (the near mythical being or group who coined the phrase) obviously had in mind a divine plan, a mystical monkey-barrel ratio of monkey bliss. The Ratio Committee worked hard and long, examining archaeological data, the Egyptian hieroglyphs, various biblical texts, the Tantric Guide to Orgasmic Love, the Wiccan Guide and of course, the Easy Guide to the Future and Past Through the Sandwich Oracle. The result was stupendous and is still debated: 6.7 monkeys per barrel (it is thought that the PF was close friends with the first director of the U. S. Census Bureau). Since Monkus Intactus was in effect, this was rounded to 7.0. Increasing or decreasing this number can cause variations in the Monkey Giggle Value, exact extent of this changes and the rate of change of the rate of change is still unknown.

3. The Fun Board decided that the Barrel of Monkeys was equivalent to 15 minutes of rather good stand up comedy, 5 minutes of a really good Doom game, half an orgasm, 7 good sandwiches, half of a joint or a six-pack of good beer. It was, however, nowhere as good as the acid they took as comparison. Meeting called on account of severe lack of coherence suffered after the last comparison.

4. The Attitude Panel decided that the Ratio Committee was correct (or at least impossible to disprove), but that the Monkey Attitude Aspect would modify the Ratio. It was decided that the original MAA had to be 1.0 (else the RCs' ratio was wrong). Various changes in MAA can be effected by conditions, food, drink and the amount of Monkey Aphrodisiac, to name a few of the many things tried that morning. The best was a secret combination that resulted in a a Monkey Happiness Multiplier (MHM) of 6.7 (a coincidence thereby proving the need of a Creator Being and his need for Sandwiches and The Galactic Guide). The worst remains unknown, but 670 monkeys died during experimentation.

5. Before adjourning for lunch a working model of the equation was developed and is published here for the first time: M = (rndup (MPB))B, where M = Number of Monkeys, MPB = Monkeys Per Barrel, and B = the number of Barrels. A second equation, detailing the Giggle Value of a barrel of monkeys: G = ((M/MPB)F)MAA or G = BF*MAA, where F is the giggle Factor as outlined in point 3. The equations are rough, and the nonlinear portions of the CI (Crowding Index) are still under consideration and thusly not taken into account.

6. Lunch led to cocktails, dinner led to after-dinner drinks which led to a brawl, a three alarm fire and put 33 conference attendees, 2 police and 6.7 monkeys in the hospital.

7. All of this was irrelevant since the world was soon to be destroyed and not a single monkey or barrel would survive. _

[rapscalious rob]

a into a human parasite

Figures

Chlamydia trachomatis inclusions in infected...

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PubMed Coffee Break

Created: July 15, 1999

Plant genes contribute to a sexually transmitted disease?
How plant genes found their way into a human parasite

The most frequently reported sexually transmitted disease in the United States is caused by the parasitic bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. Although about half a million cases of infection are reported annually, a more realistic incidence is around 4 million cases per year. This is because there is a large pool of asymptomatic individuals within the population. If left untreated, chlamydial infections can develop into pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and can also cause severe but curable eye disease (trachoma).

The Chlamydia Genome Project consortium has recently sequenced the C. trachomatis genome. It has a circular chromosome of about 1,045,000 base pairs, about one-quarter the size of Escherichia coli. Analysis of the sequence has identified 888 protein-coding genes. Among these, some proteins appear to have an unconventional natural history.

The genome appears to have undergone an unusually high number of horizontal gene transfer events, suggesting that the parasitic nature of C. trachomatis provides greater opportunity for gene transfer to occur. More bizarre, though, is that some of the C. trachomatis proteins are more related to green plants than to other bacteria or their human hosts.

FabI and FabF, two chlamydial proteins involved in the fatty acid synthesis component of membrane biogenesis, seem to be most closely related to their plant counterparts, whereas plsB, involved in lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis, has only plant orthologs.

How this came to be relies on linking two pieces of information. First, a Chlamydia-like parasite has been found recently in Acanthamoeba, a free-living protozoan usually found in fresh water or soil but which may occur as a human pathogen. Perhaps Acanthamoeba represents the original host for Chlamydia, and served as a vector to transfer its Chlamydia parasite to humans. Second, inferences made from 16S-like RNA provide evidence that Acanthamoeba is phylogenetically related to green plants. One would therefore expect some Acanthamoeba and green plant genes to be highly related. Horizontal transfer between Acanthamoeba (host) and Chlamydia (parasite) could therefore give plant-like genes to Chlamydia. If this horizontal transfer occurred before Chlamydia was passed to humans, then it is possible that a human parasite has plant-like genes.

Analysis of the genome of Chlamydia will provide a starting point for a deeper understanding of other eukaryotic parasites, including those responsible for human disease.

[Aphrodite]

Very Stephen King. Creepshow. "Meteor Shite"

[Spicy Jack]

i like nachos.

[Aphrodite]

I made guacamole (sp) the other night. I had a vague memory of it so I mixed an avacado with Mayo, onion finely diced, a tiny hint of garlic, and some relish?
Is that about right?
It wasn't that great. Good but not right.

[Smartypants]

I use

- a coarsely chopped tomato (best if it's blanched, peeled, and seeded)

- some finely minced red or white onion (rinse the chopped white onion in a sieve under cold water and shake dry - cuts the bite)

- finely chopped fresh serrano pepper (to your hot tolerance)

Cut a halved avocado while it's still in its skin with four or five slices in each direction, and then scoop it into the bowl with the other stuff. Squeeze a lime (preferably a mexican one or a key lime), and salt & pepper to taste.

Mix it all together so it's chunky (don't make it really smooth) and adjust lime/salt/pepper/spice.

It's JUST like the best you get in Mexico! Yum!

The best guac is deceptively simple. No garlic and NO MAYO!

¡Buen provecho!

:D

[Hyakujo's Fox]

"Those tales of great rodent nations marching into battle are pure myth, ratologists say, but no one really knows the rats' full capabilities. Surely there are many stories of rat cooperation and even compassion.

A good example is the famous Rattenkonig or "rat king." Young rats close to one another in the nest sometimes get their tails entangled and become a living Gordian knot glued together by dirt encrusted wounds and the like. When they try to pull apart the tails are pulled tight, and the knots strengthen, knitting the rats together.

As many as 32 rats are trapped in these knots and have died as a result of being unable to forage for themselves. However, they are often unselfishly fed for life by other family members.

There is no doubt that rat kings exist: sixty or so have been reported in Europe since 1564 and about 40 (most of them found alive) have been authenticated, the latest in 1963. Rat kings have frequently been preserved, painted, and photographed, and in 1774 a 16-rat king was examined by a Leipzig court in connection with a charge that a miller's apprentice had cheated his master by stealing the king from him and pocketing a tidy sum by exhibiting it.

The name rat king may come from the old superstition that an aged wise rat sat on the entangled tails of rats and was treated as royalty by the pack. But it could just as well derive from an early belief that the animals entangled were one organism, a supreme rat with many bodies.

Rat kings range in composition from 3 - 32 rats, with most consisting of 5 - 10 animals, and are apparently found only among the long and less pliable tailed black rat species, although a few verified rodent kings of squirrels and several unverified mice kings have been reported.

Brown rat kings have been induced in the laboratory. Rat kings fabricated by tying the tails of live rats together look nothing like real kings, but rat kings have been created in the laboratory by gluing the tails of rats together; this causes the rats to become so entangled while trying to extricate themselves that a true knot is formed.

Yet no zoologist has been able to prove exactly how rat kings are formed in nature. It is possible that the tails become entangled when the rats huddle together facing outward for warmth and security, urine and feces from those in the upper circle falling onto the entwined mass of tails.

Other possibilities are that the tails might become entangled while the males are wildly fighting for females, or during mass grooming, or in the nest shortly after birth, or after the tails of a number of rats come into contact with some sticky substance. It may even be that the "verminous vermicelli" are formed in several ways. The rat king remains as much a mystery to nuclear-age scientists as it was to medieval peasants."

Source: (c) Katharina Fritsch, 1993 and (c) Steve Lewis, 1997

[Aphrodite]

Why Thank you SmartyPants.

I'll be checking out this thread right after I buy another Avacado.