Show yourself: David Adam, science correspondent for The Guardian, reports on the announcement yesterday of a multi-national group of scientists who plan to create a new, gigantic atom smashing machine called the international linear collider, priced at 3 billion pounds. What for? To make the God particle (a.k.a. the Higgs boson particle) reveal itself in an explosion that briefly recreates the conditions of the Big Bang. The God particle, Adam writes, “is a mysterious sub-atomic fragment that permeates the entire universe and explains how everything is the way it is.” And if that’s not enough, it could also change physics forever…

After officials at Maine Medical Center in Portland noticed that three out of ten Muslim women were skipping their appointments, they redesigned their standard “drafty gown” to offer Muslims a more modest alternative (available upon request).

The problem with One Electorate Under God (edited by E. J. Dionne Jr., Jean Bethke Elshtain and Kayla M. Drogosz), writes Peter Steinfels in The New York Times, is its diversity — the tome weighs in with contributions from over 50 congressmen, pollsters, theologians, historians and other scholars from all religious backgrounds and three political ideologies. “Here is a nearly endless buffet of reflections rather than one or two main courses to praise or criticize,” writes Steinfels. The one common theme the authors agreed on though, “was the sheer persistence and pervasiveness of religion in American political life.” Hey, you’ve got to end a review somehow.

“‘It’s unsafe everywhere — why not buy in Israel?'” The Washington Post’s Molly Moorereports on the resurging real estate market in Jerusalem, and the Jews buying land from abroad — encouraged by religion, wealth and a slowdown of violence inside Israel.

“‘A pigeon flew down and perched on him. Jesus took this as a sign that God’s Spirit was with him. A voice from overhead was heard saying, “That’s my boy!”‘” Make room for another Bible rewrite…