Physics, Film of Pi & Half-Price Nachos

I don't really understand why people are calling Yann Martel's Life of Pie unfilmable. I figure that if Hollywood could make The English Patient, The Long Goodbye, and Cloud Atlas, then they'd be able to make movies out of basically any novel. That said, Martel seems pretty pleased with the film Ang Lee made out of his breakout Booker prize winning novel.

A hat tip is in order to Millions curiosity wrangler Rhian Sasseenfor calling my attention to this gem: Some notes on copy editing the latest issue of Granta, including “Does ‘shithole’ have a hyphen in it?” On the topic of persnickety, detail oriented reading, Steven W. Beattie responds to Yuka Igarashi's Granta editing woes and worries about reading for pleasure: “The copy editor in me will still get his back up, but I’m working on it. 'Half-price nacho’s,' on the other hand, is indefensible.”

Should the Higgs Boson be the TIME person of the year? “Person” here being, obviously, a relative term. Also, when did physics get so dang popular?