JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Roger Federer faces Andy Murray in the Wimbledon men’s singles final tonight, Manila time.

Pressure on Murray:
-To fulfill the expectations of 60 million Britons who have been waiting close to 80 years for a British men’s singles champion at Wimbledon.
-To win his first grand slam.
-To be acknowledged as a Briton and not “that Scottish guy”.

Pressure on Federer:
-None, actually, he’s done everything. But pressure on Federer devotees for Federer to win after a two-year drought, because our lives make more sense when he wins.

Dark-matter filaments, such as the one bridging the galaxy clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223, are predicted to contain more than half of all matter in the Universe. Jörg Dietrich, University of Michigan/University Observatory Munich

Dark Matter’s tendrils revealed, in Nature.

“In the same week that the detection of the Higgs boson was announced, there was an announcement in Nature that was equally awesome. On the other end of the astronomical scale, the first direct observation of dark matter and its role in the structure of the universe.” Thanks to Butch for the alert.

Koosi: I want to be brushed now.

How can you tell if your pet is too fat?

Dr. Yao: In general if you can no longer feel your pets’ ribs, then your pet is considered obese. Ideally you should be able to feel their ribs, but see only the last (floating rib) when the pet is in motion. If you can still feel all the ribs but cannot see any of them, then your pet is overweight but not obese. Spayed or neutered pets have a tendency to become too fat.

Read Everything you’ve always wanted to know about pets (but were afraid to ask your vet) in our column Emotional Weather Report today in the Philippine Star.

Roger Federer defeats Novak Djokovic in their Wimbledon semifinal.

6-3, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3.

Holy Higgs boson!!! Hmmm, the particle is discovered at CERN in Switzerland, then Roger…

Our world is all right tonight.

The Federer twins, Myla and Charlene: You don’t even have to ask.

In the first season of The Killing (the American version), the detectives question a school janitor who has the keys to what looks like the crime scene. We assume that the janitor character is Filipino because (a) His name is “Lyndon Johnson Rosales”, (b) His mother speaks to the detectives in Tagalog, and (c) There are lots of Filipinos who immigrated to Seattle where the series takes place.

However when the janitor is questioned, he makes reference to “El Diablo” (the devil) where a Pinoy would say “Demonyo” or “Ang devil”. Perhaps he has been hanging out with Spanish-speaking Americans. Or maybe the writers assumed—like the old Mac OS did—that Spanish is widely spoken in the Philippines.

We watched half of the first season of The Killing before we decided that the detectives annoy us and their police department is the most inept on television. What are they going to do, run down everyone in Washington as a suspect? Hey, don’t Edward Twilight’s vampire family and Jake Werewolf Abs’s clan live in that state? Why haven’t they been investigated?!

Detectives: Please get rid of that hideous sweater and that fugly hoodie.

If you like drinking games, The Killing will get you trashed. Every time the police are certain they’ve found their killer, take a shot. Every time they’re wrong, take a shot. Every time the lead detective misses her flight to California, take a shot. Every time her teenage son does something to get her attention, take a shot. This show should have a lot of liquor ads, they’d make a killing. Hah.

One look at Billy Campbell (He plays a city councilman running for mayor) and we knew he would be arrested at some point…because he is so handsome. Look at that!

So we watched the second half of the first season at six times normal speed and spoiler spoiler, etc. We’ve been assured that season two ends satisfyingly, but we have to build up our tolerance before we try again.

…like you understand what you’re saying. We’ve read reports on the discovery of the Higgs particle with varying degrees of confusion, but this one from Bad Astronomy is comprehensible.

Don’t call it ‘god particle’. Higgs boson evidence: a graphic showing traces of collision of particles similar to those created in the Large Hadron Collider. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images in the Guardian.

The Higgs particle is extremely important, because the Standard Model of particle physics – the basic idea of how all particles behave – predicts it exists and is what (indirectly) gives many other particles mass. In other words, the reason electrons, protons, and neutrons have mass is because of this Higgs beastie.

So, you have to collide particles over and over again, countless times, to build up that tiny signal from the Higgs decay. The more you do it, the bigger the signal gets, and the more confident you can be that the detection is real…

Read Higgs! at Bad Astronomy.