Speaking Of Ponderous Matter

Yesterday's New York Times reported the award of the Nobel Prize in physics for the Higgs Boson, that gives mass to particles in space, or something like that. When experimenters at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland detected the Higgs Boson, it completed the verification of the Standard Model, which is a very big thing in physics.

The article explained the function of the Higgs: "According to this model, the universe brims with energy that acts like a cosmic molasses, imbuing the particles that move through it with mass, the way a bill moving through Congress attracts riders and amendments, becoming more and more ponderous and controversial."

What most needs explaining now is the origin of the New York Times' tortured analogy. My theory is that the Times had no science writer to do the article, but because of the shutdown of the US government, there was a political reporter available - one who usually covers Congress and to whom such an analogy makes sense. Otherwise, there is no rational explanation.