The debonair Basil Marigold's

I can imagine the phonecall. One of the chief funders from the European Union rings the head cheese of the Large Hadron Collider, who probably goes by the name chief Proton, or something scientists find immensely funny, whereas the rest of the non-science geek world does not, for evidence of this scientist humour see here and prepare to laugh, oh yes, not just hilarious but proves why scientists really should be quite a long way under ground, away from normal people. But as we continue the story that today the Large Hadron Collider suffered a powercut . Now if I had invested $10bn in, what is essentially the worlds biggest and most complex donut I'd be expecting a pretty good explanation from those that had built it. It turns out that that part of France/Switzerland had been having some pretty bad storms. So when I am on the phone I expect that storms are a pretty good reason to tell my chief funder and I'd personally accept that. But...reading further down the story it appe

Every once in a while you come across a story where the spirit of adventure is strong, in this case other spirits may well have been involved, probably Vodka, would be  my thought. But when as a child have you not had the thought that the day when you have a balloon and let go. While you watch ascend into the atmosphere the idea of I wish I could go up with it and look down on the world as I float away. Now, today I have Google Earth to do this for me, which makes the whole thing warmer and I can sit in my star trek chair while I fly across great vista's. Yet it takes only one ridiculously mad American to rekindle that long dead dream in the child's heart that lives within! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/10186819.stm