Marcello Pavan writes that the pace at TRIUMF in Canada is similarly slow. "Vancouver has a (well deserved) reputation for its 'laid back' citizenry, and some of that is in evidence now here, in stark contrast to the usual hustle and bustle."

Summer storms worry David Waller, who has been doing night shifts as detector operator at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. His concern? "Lighting can mess up a physics experiment."

August is also a time when many physicists travel for work. Peter Steinberg reports from the Quark Matter meeting in Budapest, Hungary, where it is "bla bla non stop" (meant in the best way). And Gordon Watts is on an extended work trip in Marseille, France, where he enjoys "2 beers, a quiet table on a large square, [and] an hour of reading time." We wish we were there with you, Gordon.

The latest thing
What's up with the WMAP T-shirts and underwear, wonders Jochen Weller? "It clearly has not accelerated the release of the 2nd year WMAP data, we all wait so eagerly for. Could this be a future way to fund science, or just pay for the coffee we drink all day long?"

Ursula Bassler expresses her frustration with C++, the computer programming language that has replaced FORTRAN in high-energy physics. "I am still not convinced that C++ is so much more adapted to what we are doing," she writes. "My former office mate, who is rather a computing wiz and who worked on BARBAR, told me that on a C++ conference a speaker defending C++ stated that C++ is not made for fast calculation, that's why physicists use FORTRAN..."