CERN?

Madrid, 10 September 2008

This ought to be an interesting day. The stock market on Tuesday took back all that it had given on Monday. I have a blinking screen which shows how things are going in my portfolio -- an emaciated thing in the best of times -- and yesterday it was a grim red (ie, down) for most the day. Last night we had a terrific storm here in Madrid. I was awakened to the booming echoes of thunder and the rat-a-tat of a hard rain. I dragged myself down the hall to Alex's room. She normally sleeps with the door to her bedroom open so I wanted to make sure that she'd closed it. With the amazing capacity of teenagers to sleep through alarms, wars and, this time, acts of nature, she was happily unconscious of the rain and, I discovered, the hail which was bouncing off the balcony, through the door and around her room. I closed the doors, turned off the lights that she'd left on and made my way back to bed where I read myself to sleep, ignoring the second augury of the day.

So, with these indications that both nature and the human world are in some state of turmoil, I look to today with some trepidation and we try to mix the natural and the human at CERN. We are going to turn that thing on today for the first time. If all goes well, a huge step forward, human knowledge and ingenuity working with nature to discover the secrets of the univers. If it doesn't go so well, I guess Alex will not have to worry about her homework today and I actually wont have to pay taxes ...

There is always a bright side.