Ichiban –

OD is down, so I am writing this in EverNote, with a view to publishing at some point if it ever comes back to life.

Firstly, the weekend; I went to Cardiff with the family to meet friends for lunch. We ate very good Japanese food at the Ichiban Restaurant, before visiting the museum of Welsh Life, which was OK, but not thrilling. I don’t think we did anything else of any note. Oh there was a children’s birthday party for a friend of the boy Saturday, and I pot roasted a chicken.

Idiot of the day award goes to Bob Geldof who has made a speech at the One Young World summit in Johannesburg, in which he suggests that there will be a mass extinction event and we may all die in 16 years. It’s not clear how he arrived at this figure of 16 years. In fact it looks suspiciously like he’s just made it up. Which is why we should not be turning to burnt out pop stars for advice on climate change. Although, it’s difficult to know who we should be turning to since the scientists are also apparently making up random figures.

It’s been a good day for physics. Peter Higgs finally got his Nobel prize. I suppose they couldn’t really give it to him until they actually found the particle. He must be very happy anyway.

Someone is claiming to have produced a fusion reactor which actually produces more power than it consumes, which should mean a Utopian dream society is just on the horizon. There must be a catch.

And there is a piece in the Telegraph I completely don’t understand which claims that a new geometric jewel is going to unite quantum theory with gravity. I’ve sent that one to my friend Alan the particle physicist to explain. More news on that as we get it.