Picture the world in prehistory. No television, computer games, or cars. In between hunting wild beasts I guess they had a lot time on their hands. So bored was one ancestor of humanity that he discovered rubbing wooden sticks together made things catch fire.. Can you imagine how excited he was to discover that?

Later, when voluminous wigs were fashionable, Newton discovered that sitting under apple trees was not only painful, but seriously enlightening. Sometime later, Einstein discovered that mathematics alone could prove how difficult the universe was to understand. Not really mad scientist stuff was it? Where's the drama? Newton decided that gravity constantly attracted things, Einstein discovered there was a universal constant. Sigh... Science is definitely getting duller with each generation.

If you think that's wrong, consider the Big Bang. That's the first thing that ever happened and what an explosion! Everything, literally everything, compressed into a space smaller than my chances of getting a job. Then it blew up. No warning whatsoever. Some people say we're made of stars. I say most of us are made of shrapnel.

The reason I write this is that I've just watched a tv documentary on the Big Bang. It's just so incredible. Like a lot of television programs, it was all Flash Bang Wallop! Fast paced, lots of fancy computer graphics, and the same message repeated thirty seven times. The first second of the universe was the most important. Okay, okay, I got that. Can we move on to something else now?

Eventually they did. They showed a lot of interior shots of that big underground hadron collider in Europe, and told us that this device will open up new vistas of reality we can only dream of. You mean, there's going to be a sequel to this documentary? I can't wait, especially since the only thing I can remember from the voiceover about the hadron collider was that they broke it.

Technology of the Week

Mind control is here. I've just watched an orchestra play instruments electronically with sensors wrapped around their skulls. Is that a good thing? Part of the joy of playing musical instruments is that moment when your dexterity does what you want without having to think about it. So what's the point of mind control when we've had it built-in for millions of years?