I just visited the Scientific American to see whether they had picked up this Physicsworld story on an allegedly successful cold fusion experiment in Japan. It seems they didn’t, and so my premature hopes of seeing the world’s energy problems solved before I left the office today took a little dent.

Instead, SciAm’s front page featured a story on the therapeutic value of blogging:

Scientists now hope to explore the neurological underpinnings at play, especially considering the explosion of blogs. According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.

Therapeutic value notwithstanding, I’ll stop blogging for now and head over to the Freemasons Arms pub in Hampstead for dinner and a cold beer with Drs. Hennig-Thurau and Wiertz.