Strike a Boson (okay, not one of my better titles)

There's been unprecedented requests for my opinion on this topic - in that a friend e-mailed and suggested I write a blog entry on it.  It's the sort-of discovery of the Higgs Boson.  It wasn't that long ago that I learned I was mispronouncing "Boson" and now suddenly everyone is talking about it.  So here are some thoughts:

• It's odd how underwhelmed physicists are about having our leading hypothesis confirmed.  A few have even come right out and said it would have been more interesting if they had failed to find it.  It's a pet peeve of mine that people who know little about science often imagine scientists as being anal-retentive organisation-freaks who are driven to explain everything out of a supreme fear of the unknown.  Anyone who has actually been around scientists knows they're actually attracted to mysteries, and their current disappointment is indicative of it.
• I should be grateful to the media for mentioning this story which is surely not gaining them any ratings.  At the same time though, you get the feeling that the amount of hours spent on the Higgs story could have been better spent on regular reports on science.  But that's true of any topic: we'd be better served by a media that gave well-rounded, regular reports than periodic, fanatic over-analysis.
• I'm at least glad they've largely stopped calling it The God Particle.  As many scientists have pointed out - putting aside the questionable theology of the name - the fact is that really gives an over-inflated idea of what the particle does.  It's important, but not supreme-deity-important.  Having said that, I saw one headline calling it, "God's Particle."  Um, aren't they all God's particles?
• But I'm not done running down this particle.  I recently found out that the layman's description of the Higgs - "it gives matter mass" - isn't entirely true.  It does give matter some of it's mass, but most of an atom's mass is a result of the forces holding the nucleus and its components together.
• Keep in mind that there's still plenty more to do in Physics.