Category Archives: Comment

January 21, 2010 · 4:26 pm

Alex’s Guide to the Best and Worst Ways To Help Haiti

The earthquake has gripped the world’s consciousness, and whilst it has caused some prime examples of the best of human nature to display themselves, it has also caused a lamentable number of side-effects. I have therefore taken it upon myself to draw up a list of best and worst ways to help the people of Haiti, which have been respectively spawned and spewed this week.

The Worst

1. Pay US Income Tax

“We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the US Income Tax.”

Rush Limbaugh to a radio caller.

The United States government has pledged $100 million to Haiti. The European Union has pledged $560 million. By working this out as a per capita rate according to their respective populations, the EU has pledged $1.14 for each EU citizen, whilst the US has only pledged $0.33 per US citizen. Statistics alone would indicate that US Income Tax is certainly not the world’s most efficient means of getting money to Haiti.

2. Pray for their souls
Don’t get me wrong. I am not hating on Christians generally – indeed many of the Charities doing the most for humanitarian relief are in fact Christian organisations (see below). But come on – what about this from Pat Robertson, the US Televangelist:

And you know, Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the Prince, true story. And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . the Island of Hispaniola is one island cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is, is, prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty, same Islands, uh, they need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I’m optimistic something good may come, but right now we’re helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.

“Pat” apparently is not actually his real-name, but a childhood nickname derived from the fact that as a baby people liked to pat him a lot.

May I suggest that in the future he might consider changing it to Punch Robertson.

3. Buy Simon Cowell’s forthcoming charity single
Gordon Brown has apparently asked Simon Cowell to gather a bunch of X-Factor no-marks together as well as a few celebs in order to record a charity single. Oh please! Has Brown no taste? Surely if he wants to court popularity with the British electorate (and boy does he need to) surely he should be asking Rage Against The Machine to record a charity single instead???

The Best

1. Make an immediate donation
Here is a selection of sites where you can make a donation by credit card:

2. Write off Haiti’s Debts

According to the charity Christian Aid, Haiti as a country owes $890 million (approximately £550 million) in unpayable debts. Most of this is to the IMF. It is frightening to think that the great and the good have been calling for world financial institutions to cancel third world debt for at least twenty years or more, and it still has not happened to a discernible extent. Whilst it would be great if this happened in the case of Haiti, it is only the second best solution, because although it would make the country $890 million better off, it would not actually represent actual money in their pockets.

3. Buy Lionel Richie’s forthcoming charity single.

Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones are planning to re-record “We Are The World” twenty five years after it was first released, and are getting a load of American stars to perform on it. I actually liked this tune (which Richie originally co-wrote with Michael Jackson), so I think I will bag myself a copy. Much better than the crap Simon Cowell is bound to come up with.

“But Alex,” I hallucinate that you are imploring me. “Why be mean to Simon Cowell when he is trying to be nice this time? Why not buy a copy of both Cowell and Richie’s single?” No, quite frankly. If I were of a mind to pay for two singles recorded for Haitian disaster relief, I would actually download Richie’s single twice.

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January 10, 2010 · 12:08 pm

99 Problems But Being A Mason Isn’t One

Another blog post in my series of presenting an insider’s guide to the New World Order.

How quickly all talk of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol fades from the public consciousness. If Google News is to be believed at all, the only hot topic in Freemasonry at the moment would appear to be whether rapper Jay Z is on the square or not. However when I researched it, apparently it is not a new story at all, it goes back to at least 2007. Apparently the evidence goes like this:

  • Jay Z read the Latin inscription which is printed on the back of the $1 bill in one of his lyrics – and now he is a member of the NWO.

Get real! By that definition any American can get into the club by reading their own currency.

  • There is a picture of Jay Z on the net giving Nas a funny handshake.

OK the guy does look as if his thumb is bent at an unusual angle. But I would be slow to draw conclusions from this.

  • He is a successful rapper and has earned millions.

Hmm? Might this not be more to do with the fact that people have been buying his records? Masons cannot actually produce money out of thin air, you know.

In fact, the evidence for saying that Jay Z is a mason is pretty slim. He has not done anything which could not have been achieved by not being a mason. In my opinion, the only sign of a conspiracy would have been if his contacts had managed to get him an unusual gig, which he would not have been able to get otherwise – say for example headlining at a major British festival traditionally reserved for rock acts only. 😉

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December 22, 2009 · 3:40 pm

The Church of England vs The Eighth Commandment

Was greatly amused this morning by reading a story in the Independant (yes I was that bored), about a C of E vicar who said that in cases of extreme poverty and desperation, it is morally right for a starving man to shop-lift from a supermarket in order to feed himself. To back his argument up, he pointed out that the way the UK treats poor people is so bad (or at best, inefficient), and the fact that God’s love for the poor is more important than anything else, that a little case of breaking the Eighth Commandment is excusable.

I note that this Vicar only said it was morally right to steal from large businesses. Ironically, he did not say anything about it being right to steal from Churches! After all, let’s face it – who has done more to leach money out of the poor and keep them in subjugation: Sainsbury’s or the Church of England???

Methinks this Vicar is being a bit of a NIMBY. He thinks it is ok for an indigent to steal from a supermarket, but heaven help the same person who nips in to his place and half-inches the candlesticks!

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December 10, 2009 · 5:08 pm

Alex is still committed to World Peace!

Further to my blog-post in October, it appears that Barack Obama having angered everyone else at getting the Nobel Prize for just 11 days work, is now angering the Norwegians as well – by trying to spend as little time in their country as possible. Talk about ingratitude!

I would just like to make it clear to the people of Norway that if you awarded me the Nobel Peace Prize, I, unlike certain Presidents of the USA I could mention, would just love to have lunch with King Harald and to attend all the other jollies you put on. And of course, I am willing to do it for a slightly lower bribe than you backhanded to Obama ahem I mean I don’t care so much about the prize-money. JEG ELSKER NORGE!!! 🙂

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November 30, 2009 · 5:01 pm

Psychic Self Defence for Footballers (and the rest of us).

Cristiano Ronaldo, Read Madrid footballer and Portuguese international has apparently been cursed by a Voodoo priest with the intention of ending his career. Pepe, the Voodoo priest in question (presumably no relation to the Real Madrid number three), claims that he is not doing it because he has a thing against Real Madrid or Ronaldo personally, but because he has been paid good-money to do so. Well, you can’t fault the man’s ethics!

But the real question is who hired Pepe to work this evil magick? Journalists have come up with a short-list of likely suspects. They have narrowed it down to Ronaldo’s ex-girlfriends, and several million Barcelona / Man City / England / etc fans.

“But Alex,” I hallucinate that I hear you say, “can you not provide some magical help or advice for those of us who might find ourselves caught in the same situation? Even if we don’t play for Real Madrid?” Why certainly! Here is my quick guide to Psychic Self-Defence.

By far the most lucid and sensible account of the subject is the book of the same name by Dion Fortune. Unfortunately, from the cases I myself have heard about, this book is obviously far too sensible for anyone to take any notice of! Basically, Dion’s gist is this: at least 90% or more of cases of alleged psychic attack are in fact nothing of the sort – instead they are far more likely to be either imaginary or symptomatic of a psychoneurotic condition (or worse).

Hence the first step in warding off a perceived magical or psychic attack is to seriously consider whether it might not be as bad you first thought. I have heard from people who claimed that they were being attacked and cursed and hexed right left and centre – and then casually admit that they had been hospitalised for schizophrenia in the past, and not make any connection between the two.

So let us assume that you have been able to dismiss every possible mundane explanation for the run of misfortune you are experiencing, and suspect that it may well indeed be a psychic attack? What then? The simple answer is that just as a psychic attack starts from somebody else’s mind, so a good psychic defence starts from your own. You basically have to fervently Will that you are protected, and it is so. There are a number of methods which facilitate this.

Essentially by visualising a magical barrier surrounding oneself, and concentrating on the idea that it will protect you from malicious influences, this has the effect of actually repelling such forces. The most famous method of forming such a magical barrier is the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which was originally devised by the Golden Dawn.

The casting of the circle in Wicca is itself a circle of protection which protects all the participants whilst they are taking part in a particular ritual.

In his book, Auras: What They Are and How To Read Them, the author Joseph Ostrom describes several Aura meditations which are effectively protection rituals. For example, visualising oneself in a gold-metallic aura: this not only protects from unwanted external influences, but also energises and perks up the individual thus protected.

There are many other such protection rituals which are based upon the same principal e.g. the meditation on the Cloak in Martinism, numerous variations on the Pentagram ritual itself, etc. One important fact is that these rituals not only protect from external malign forces but also close down ones own psychic sensitivities if one has negligently left them open.

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November 28, 2009 · 12:52 pm

Stop press: more aliens!

You have got to admire a country who have named their capital city after the Gnostic concept of redemptive wisdom. Since writing the blog entry which precedes this one, I have uncovered this new story: apparently government scientists in Bulgaria are already in contact with extraterrestrial beings. Personally I think these scientists are the victims of a practical joke by one of my colleagues in the occult community. Naming no names, but if these aliens start telling the scientists to stop using Apple Macs and switch to Windows-based systems instead, you will know what I am talking about 😉

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November 28, 2009 · 12:42 pm

Aliens & Magick

The Vatican apparently is now interested in astrobiology, i.e. life among the stars. This has set many tongues wagging, with commentators pointing out that if life does exist on other planets, this would go against a literal interpretation of the Bible. I do not think this will be too much of a problem, as the Catholic Church has not let its magisterium be constrained by something so inconvenient as actually reading the source text up to now.

However – never mind about what happens with regards to Christianity when life on other planets is confirmed: more importantly, how will this affect the Qabalah?

A Tree of Life Crop Circle which has been photoshopped by some teenager *cough* I mean created by an alien who knows about Athanasius Kircher.

The Tree of Life
I have heard some people argue that the Qabalah is in fact a universal principle, given that there have been instances on earth of Crop Circles in the form of the Tree of Life. (Strange how our alien brethren approve of the Kircher version of the Tree of Life, as opposed to, say, the Lurianic version!) Now the Sepher Yetzirah makes great mention of the fact that the Qabalah is based on the number ten, not nine, ten, not eleven. But… what kind of Qabalah would an alien with a different number of fingers to us humans have come up with?

Now some people, still pointing to the crop circles as proof, have tried to argue that the number ten is a universal principle which has nothing to do with the number of fingers that we have. However: the evidence is in Sepher Yetzirah that the magic number ten is indeed associated with our fingers, as Qabalistic attributions are given thereto: moreover, it attaches importance to being able to form letters of the Hebrew alphabet with ones fingers. This incidentally is how Leonard Nimoy devised the Vulcan Salute. It is actually the sign a Cohen makes as he is giving the valedictory blessing in a synagogue (it actually represents the letter Shin).

Most authorities are of the opinion that we use a decimal system as opposed to any other simply because we have ten fingers – because they are our first counting tools. I therefore say this. If aliens have a version of the Qabalah and the Tree of Life, it will be based not on Ten sephiroth, but on whatever number-base they happen to use – i.e. which is most likely to be the number of fingers they have, if indeed they have fingers.

Astrology
The most popular forms of Astrology present on Earth are by their very nature Geocentric. The constellations are the way that the stars appear from Earth, and the belt of the Zodiac is defined by the route which the Sun – our Sun – takes through the heavens.

However, if Aliens had their own version of Astrology, firstly it would not be Geocentric; secondly it would be based on a completely different Sun and set of planets; and thirdly there would be no correlation to our constellations whatsoever, as their own would appear to be completely different. The only feature of our astrology which might feature in their version would be the fact that our Sun might be visible from their own solar system. This is significant because the development of Astrology on our own planet has been governed by attaching importance to that which is most visible (the Sun, the Moon), and then defining the rest of the system in relation to that. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Alien Astrologers would only attach importance to the objects which are most noticeable from their own home planet(s), which could mean that if our Sun is in what is to them a relatively obscure part of their sky, it may not enter into their consideration at all.

This is somewhat by the by, though, as I predict that Earth Astrology is soon going to be refuted according to its own logic. This has nothing to do with astronomy purporting to have refuted it already. I shall explain: Earth Astrology relies on a given birth / event / etc having a time, date and place somewhere on the planet’s surface, because the key to the Horoscope is the Ascendant, the sign which is on the horizon at the time for which the chart is drawn.

However, the higher one is above the ground, the more fluid the concept of the horizon becomes, until when one has left the Earth altogether, it ceases to have any meaning. Thus – at some point in the future, there is going to be a human being born in outer space, and when that happens, it will be impossible to draw up a horoscope for that person. Therefore I say that at that point conventional astrology will have to be abolished, because there will be at least one person alive to whom it cannot apply.

There is such a thing as Heliocentric astrology, although because of the peculiarities of the heliocentric system it is not suitable for dealing with the kind of issues for which geocentric astrology is currently used. However, even Heliocentric astrology is going to be refuted when the first human being is born outside our solar system. Which brings me back to Alien Astrology – if aliens do exist in other solar systems, then we cannot apply our astrology to them.

The Age of Aquarius
Finally, I shall just like to briefly mention this: the whole idea of cosmic ages is another geocentric notion which is going to go the same way as geocentric astrology. Now, as noted above, I predict that astrology is going to be refuted when at least one human being is born in outer space. Reason suggests that this is going to be sometime in the next hundred or two hundred years. The Age of Aquarius is due to begin in the next hundred or two hundred years – at approximately the same time that the whole concept of the Age of Aquarius will be refuted according to the logic of Astrology. Irony of ironies! Were I a superstitious man I would be inclined to say that the birth of the first human in space will be the actual event that signifies the Age of Aquarius. In any case the challenge of the next great aeon will be to move away from a human-centric, ego-centric, notion of mysticism and to evolve a more cosmological outlook.

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October 29, 2009 · 7:43 pm

Voodoo Practitioner to become next Prime Minister?

In the news today I note that serial comeback-queen and Voodoo practitioner Peter Mandelson is attempting to become Prime Minister of the UK. Mandelson, as a life peer, is currently barred from standing in the House of Commons, under centuries old rules that say that members of one chamber in our bi-cameral system cannot simultaneously become a member of the other as well.

However, a bill is currently before Parliament which if passed would theoretically allow Life Peers to give up their peerage and thus become eligible to stand in the House of Commons. By convention, the Prime Minister of the UK has been a member of the Commons for the last one hundred years, when the then King refused to appoint a peer as PM saying it was more appropriate in modern times that he should come from the elected chamber, as opposed to the unelected Lords.

Should this bill allowing Life Peers to resign their peerage be passed? Quite probably yes. The House of Lords is an out-dated institution, destined for eventual oblivion: both main political parties are supposedly committed to its wholesale reform. It makes sense to allow its members to give up their peerages so that they can stand in an elected chamber – after all, in a few years’ time they are not going to have a chamber of their own. Moreover, one of the important disadvantages of the House of Lords is that it entrenches the notion of patronage in British politics. The majority of hereditary peers having been banned from the Lords back in the nineties, the chamber is now dominated by those who owe their seat there to the patronage of the current Government. Opposition parties are allowed to have a certain number of working peers appointed, but basically it is the Government who controls who becomes a peer and thus become a member of the Lords. Any measure that gets rid of appointees and replaces them with elected politicians must surely make Parliament more democratic.

Should, however, Mandelson himself become Prime Minister – even if it until no longer than next July? Let’s look at the record of this man:

July 1997 – Appointed Minister without Portfolio on Labour winning the general election. Given responsibility for the “Millennium Dome.” His management of the dome came in for constant criticism – Stephen Bayley, an adviser who was forced to quit by Mandelson, stated with unwitting irony: “If Mandy went down to a voodoo sacrifice in Brixton tonight, he’d come back tomorrow saying, `We must have voodoo sacrifices in the Dome’.”

July 1998 – promoted to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

December 1998 – resigned as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry over a scandal involving an interest free loan which he had received.

October 1999 – Mandelson’s boyfriend contacts Brazilian “Voodoo” * priest Jose Lima Da Silva (aka “Zezinho”) to get rid of one of his arch-rivals, Charlie Whelan. Mandelson himself adds a short note to the letter. Eight days later he returns to government as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

*Technically it is not “Voodoo” but “Candomble” – a Brazilian practice which shares enough similarities to the former for a typical British journalist to confuse the two.

February 2000 – Charlie Whelan resigns from his political career – but goes on to forge a new career in the media.

January 2001 – Mandelson resigns again after he tried to do a favour for one of the Hinduja brothers – businessmen who were then under investigation for involvement in the Bofors scandal. Coincidentally the Hindujas were principal sponsors of one part of the Millennium Dome (qv).

March 2001 – Zezinho sells his story to the Mail on Sunday. It is implied that Mandelson and his boyfriend had met Zezinho in person sometime prior to October 1999, as it was alleged that they had been present at a ceremony in Brazil where a chicken was slaughtered.

2004 – Mandelson resigns from British politics altogether to become a European Commissioner.

2008 – retires from the European Commission and becomes a Life Peer, member of the House of Lords, and Business Secretary.

June 2009 – receives additional appointments as First Secretary of State (an honorary title), and Lord President of the Council (i.e. of the Privy Council – this position is usually given to the Leader of the House of Lords).

October 2009 – alleged to be contemplating wanting to return to the House of Commons and perhaps become Prime Minister.

So what we have here is a politician who resigned twice from senior Government positions in shady circumstances, yet somehow manages to keep coming back. Perhaps supernatural forces are calling him back to power – despite Mandelson’s best effort to scupper his own political career!

In Haiti, there is a practice of fetishizing politicians who have achieved temporal power, such as the President of the United States, on the basis that they must have some “pizzazz” about them to achieve what they have done. It strikes me though that if any recent British politician deserves that kind of veneration, it would be Tony Blair, not Mandelson. After all, Blair had a solid ten years as Prime Minister and was fairly successful at it. Mandelson’s career on the other hand has been decidedly volatile and haphazard – hardly what one would call prime ministerial.

In my opinion, Mandelson’s biggest fault is not that he practiced black magick – but that he practiced black magick so badly.

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October 26, 2009 · 7:43 pm

… but then we shall see face to face.

John Dee, the famous Elizabethan Mathematician, Scholar and Occultist, continues to exercise a powerful hold over the British imagination. So much so that British newspaper The Guardian this weekend featured a nice article this weekend about Dee’s “Shewstone” or black-obsidian disc with which he got Edmund Kelly to skry all the wonders of what we nowadays call Enochian Magic.

The article in question was about a new exhibition at the Tate St Ives (Cornwall, not Cambridgeshire) about magic and modernity. This proved to be somewhat ironic as according to the article, the exhibition neither featured the work of a modern magic practitioner, nor did it feature John Dee’s Shewstone. Ah well, serves me right for reading such a miserable excuse for a paper. Back to The Daily Telegraph for me in future!

But this got me thinking that I should take this opportunity to write a blog piece about Dark Mirrors and their use in magic generally.

A “dark mirror” or Speculum (not to be confused with the medical instrument of the same name) is not so much a conventional mirror but a black shiny surface in which one’s reflection may be perceived. It is used in magic for evocations.

Now a number of magicians seem to think that when performing an evocation, the spirit somehow materialises within the Triangle of Art out of thin air – but a survey of both classic magic texts and modern sources suggests that this is not the case. A great many texts suggest that the object of evocation is to make a given spirit appear in some sort of skrying medium: the most famous example of which would be the classic Crystal Ball.

However a number of other media have also been described as being used – e.g. Dee’s black-obsidian disc, or a bowl of water (a technique favoured by the Ancient Egyptians) or a small quantity of black ink held in the palm of one’s hand. Anything in fact which is black and shiny.

Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825 – 1875) advocated the use of dark mirrors for skrying purposes. He recommended using two sheets of glass, one flat and the other (the skrying surface) concave: the space between the two sheets of glass was to be filled with black ink. Randolph also wrote down practical instructions for getting started in dark-mirror skrying. (See his book Sexual Magic).

Eliphas Lévi (1810 – 1875) famously attempted to evoke the spirit of Appolonius of Tyana into a mirror. Technically he succeeded (he claimed that an apparition of Appolonius appeared) but for all the good it did him he might have just as well tried reading the tea-leaves.

Franz Bardon (1909 – 1958) in his book Initiation Into Hermetics also describes how to create magic mirrors for the purpose of skrying. According to Bardon there are several methods – such a mirror can be made from an actual mirror or glass bowl, a concave glass disc (such as can be obtained from clock-makers), or bowl which has been made by oneself out of plaster-of-paris. Knowledge of what Bardon calls “fluid condensers” – substances which attract magical influences in a kind of very simplified alchemy – is necessary to render the mirror effective. Once prepared – and assuming that one undergoes all of the other steps required for magical training – the magic mirror can be used for skrying the various planes of existence, contacting dead people, contacting magical entities, and numerous other magical effects.

The most famous practitioner of dark-mirror skrying today is Carroll “Poke” Runyon, founder of the Ordo Templi Astarte. Runyon has stated that he re-discovered the practice all by himself in the early seventies, and uses it to contact the seventy-two spirits of the Goetia of the Lesser Key of Solomon (whilst using a crystal ball for contacting angelic beings). See The Magick of Solomon.

What is being observed when one looks into a dark mirror? The reductionist-materialist would say that it is merely a dim reflection of oneself. However, in every case of evocation with which I am familiar, the magician does not just sit down in front of the object, but prepares himself with a great deal of magic ritual, which involves concentration and entering into an ecstatic or visionary state of consciousness. Runyon for example explicitly states that both raja yoga and self-hypnosis are necessary requisites for proper skrying in the dark mirror. Therefore although the physical cause of the apparition is the dim reflection of the skryer, what the skryer perceives is in fact the sum total of the influences at work on his or her mind at that particular moment, due to the magical ceremony in progress.

There is a description of a dark mirror skrying operation in my novel which I do not recommend readers carry out literally – it is meant to be the direct opposite of what a normal respectable magician would do in real life. On the other hand it is meant to convey an authentic flavour of what a vile, degenerate luciferian ceremony would consist.

Finally I should point out that several magicians claim that it is not necessary to “see” a spirit in order to evoke it properly. Lon Milo Duquette for example has claimed success with Goetic operations, but readily admits that when he evokes a spirit he feels its presence rather than seeing it. In Chaos Magick, an evocation refers to evoking the effects of a magical force to physical manifestation, not necessarily to evoking a visible appearance of the force itself.

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October 16, 2009 · 5:59 pm

More Ig-Nobel Shenanigans

But this time the Norwegians are not responsible

Reading a hilarious piece in the New York Times about how a couple of physicists are predicting that all attempts to observe the Higgs-Boson particle under experimental conditions are being sabotaged from the future … by the effect of supposedly successfully observing the Higgs-Boson particle under experimental conditions. I.e. the HB-particle is doing the equivalent of travelling back in time and killing its grandfather. Whilst the concept of a particle creating a backward ripple in time is mildly-intriguing, the actual methodology proposed to prove the theory is only slightly less bizarre than the empirical data cited in support of it.

Essentially, the paper written by the physicists goes, if the HB-particle really is sabotaging its own discovery – for example, by causing governments to cut funding to high-energy physics experiments, getting scientists arrested as members of Al Qaeda, etc – then it will deliberately cause the most improbable situation to occur in order to do so. For example, if the decision whether to resume experiments with the Large Hadron Collider were to be made to depend on a card-drawing experiment, the HB-particle will cause the one card in the deck which denotes “do not resume the experiments” to be drawn. This, the physicists argue, would be so even if the deck in question consisted of a million-cards, 999,999 of which were “resume” cards and 1 “don’t resume.”

It is at this point that I spotted the flaw in the physicists’ theory. Not the fact that they were pair of complete barking mad fruit-loops who give Science a bad name: rather – that they had missed a prime chance to turn this into a money-making opportunity.

Card-drawing experiment? Card-drawing experiment??? I can think of a much better idea. One of the authors of the paper, Holger B Nielsen, is actually an employee of CERN, and so presumably would be influential in actually carrying out the LHC experiments. Therefore, all he has to do is to buy a ticket in the Euromillions lottery with the firm intention that if he wins the mega-jackpot he is going to quit his job and retire. Because it is in the HB-particle’s interest that Dr Nielsen be removed from his post at CERN, then surely it will help him win the lottery!

But hang on – Nielsen and his co-author Masao Minimoya have entered a Euro-lottery, albeit where the prize for being right is not quite the scale of the actual Euromillions jackpot but is still a fair old whack. I am talking of course about the Nobel Prize for Physics. If by some extraordinary fluke that Nielsen and Minimoya are proved right, then the implications will be so astounding that they must surely merit it.

Now readers of my previous blog entries will know that I have had some choice words to say about the Nobel Peace Prize – however, this one is completely different. For a start, it is judged by a Swedish panel not Norwegian (the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). Moreover, assuming that Nielsen and Minimoya could provide convincing proof that they are correct, that would be hard evidence that they did in fact deserve it.

Of course it could turn out that the LHC fails without providing the proof that Nielsen and Minimoya so desire, in which case this could be evidence that the God-particle has a sense of humour.

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