ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Pop went the weasel, and down went the Large Hadron Collider

GENEVA

It’s one of the physics world’s most-complex machines, and it has been immobilized – temporarily – by a weasel.

Spokesman Arnaud Marsollier says the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN outside of Geneva, has suspended operations because a weasel invaded a transformer that helps power the machine and set off an electrical outage Friday.

Authorities say the incident was one of several small glitches that will delay plans to restart the $4.4 billion collider by a few days.

Marsollier said Friday that the weasel died – and little remains of it.

Officials of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN, have been gearing up for new data from the 17-mile circuit that runs underground on the Swiss-French border.

Professor puts CV of his failures online to give perspective

PRINCETON, N.J.

A Princeton University professor has published a CV of his career failures as a way to give perspective to students who are feeling discouraged.

Johannes Haushofer writes atop the CV that most of what he tries fails, but those failures are often invisible. The assistant professor of psychology says it gives the wrong impression that most things work out for him, so people “are more likely to attribute their own failures to themselves.”

The CV is divided into sections with titles like “Degree programs I did not get into” and “Academic positions and fellowships I did not get.”

He says he got the idea from an article in the journal Nature.

The list ends with a “Meta-Failure” that the CV has received “way more attention” than his entire body of academic work.

University: Paying $17,570 for dining hall table was mistake

DURHAM, N.H.

The University of New Hampshire acknowledges that spending $17,000 on a custom-made chef’s table with LED lights for the campus dining hall was a mistake.

Initially, university officials thought the light-up table would allow the dining staff to interact with students and demonstrate healthy cooking techniques.

But word soon got out about the $17,570 price tag on the 16-seat table, which was installed several weeks ago. The school newspaper wrote about it, and other media outlets picked up on it.

The table costs nearly as much as in-state students pay annually for tuition and fees.

On Friday, UNH spokeswoman Erika Mantz told The Associated Press that having a chef’s table was a good idea, but much less money should have been spent.

The university plans to keep the table.

Associated Press