It turns out that if you take intelligence and fact, and dilute them with a few centuries of woo, folk-lore, misunderstood quotations, here-say and shake for several years in the head of the gullible and the misguided, then repeat the process over and over again for a few generations, what you end up with is the science of homeopathy. Complete Journal

I'm just coming to the end of my days in Valencia, which have been excellent. The conference has been a lot of fun, seeing some good talks and spending lots of time with friends and collaborators and today I went for a bit of an explore of the city before going and hiding myself away to start writing a new paper.

So, we're a little over a month into the Munich adventure and many of the teething problems have now been solved. I have a phone, I have a flat, and thanks to a huge forum of English speakers, called Toytown (named by its instigator because Munich, though a large city, doesn't have many of the things that we associate with such places - it's really a collection of posh villages welded together with cafes and bookshops), I also have furniture.My place, as many places in Germany do, came unfurnished but I managed to organise a week of pickups from around the city, collecting bookshelves, cupboards, sofas plus some miscellaneous and probably not necessary additions (a soda maker which I will be using for high pressure marinades, though in a dream I figured out a way to do this even more easily...ok, I dream about some weird stuff!) either free or second hand, and now have a pretty presentable looking flat.