I'm almost too excited to write. It may only be the first slow beam injection - nothing like the 14 TeV we can expect to see later but it's working and that's what matters. I should really have taken a day off as our proxy here suggests that we are outside the UK and means that we can't see the live news streaming. Never mind - there is a minuted blog on the Guardian website which is almost better than seeing it - gives it a 1930s ticker-tape feel. If you want something to laugh at then the BBC Have Your Say on the LHC has some statements to make you feel superior. Little enlightened ignorance there, though I have to say the recurring theme I identify with most is why would you NOT want to do this if you could. The argument about spending the money on something more useful is tired and can be demolished easily with a comparison of the cost of the LHC with other things that humans do which have no practical importance. Decrying one human activity in favour of another is like thinking that you are the most important person in an organisation. I am afraid that any argument I construct to follow this collapses into Maslow's Hierarchy and I don't want to bore you with that again. Just marvel at it all.
I have just finished CU Next Tuesday with it leaving me aware of the "just before swearing" moment in my head - especially just now when I saw someone with a hands-free mobile wandering around looking just like some drunk muttering to themselves. On top of my issues with mobiles in lavatories the whole mobile thing has just become another excuse for rudeness and general idiocy. However, the book also made me realise that I don't swear anywhere near as much as is average in our society. I was very interested in the short section about swearing in Japan which I have always known would be an obvious and wrong answer on QI. The Japanese can be extremely insulting just by using the wrong form of second person though even with the minus-10-on-the-rudeness-scale - extremely sweary form, it still manages to use a polite form - like saying "you my esteemed friend are a ******* ********". I was going to point you at insult monger but I have to say it's definitely NOT safe for work so find it yourself.
In tribute to stacks I have popped CU Next Tuesday and am now back on A Devil's Chaplain. I wonder how far back I would have to go to clear the nominal stack. In reality, many of the pushed books have been physically jettisoned but in the great logical stack of my mind they are all there backed up. I estimate the ratio of complete to finished books as about 5:1 - maybe 4:1 if you include library books. I have a horrible feeling that the human brain is quite capable of subconsciously keeping track of all the books you have started and that must add to the incomplete feeling of life. It's like always knowing whether you have coffee in the cup at your desk and indeed knowing exactly how much there is in the cup. I mentioned this a few weeks ago and I find it most disconcerting if something interferes with the amount of coffee I have left. Somewhere in my brain is an area that keeps track of this with reasonable accuracy. You can of course extend the stack of incomplete things to your whole life which makes we wonder whether anyone ever dies without feeling there was something missing. It maybe that we just start forgetting things as we get older and none of it seems to matter. There is of course a tenuous link to what must be one of the most tragic demises ever here.
Got to go - I need a lie down.
No comments:
Post a Comment