Last Friday night as I watched U2 play Glastonbury on TV, the stream of hatred on Twitter was relentless. A torrent of unforgettable ire. I’ve long known that Bono and his band excite very mixed reactions, but this seemed to take things higher. Their music is not to everyone’s taste but on this occasion the bilious flood stemmed from the band’s attitude to taxation, or rather to tax avoidance.

What the hell is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey about? I’m sure I don’t know. I’m really, really sure I don’t know.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dublin Airport,” says the pilot. “Please remember to turn your watches back thirty years.” So goes the time-worn joke but last weekend that’s more or less exactly what I did. I flew to Dublin to hear a band I first saw in concert in the summer of 1977 when I was just thirteen years old. It was a little bit crazy but I’m glad I went — I was not the least bit disappointed.

Confused by the title? I’m not surprised. I’m a little confused myself. Though this is a common experience in science and nothing to be ashamed of. I was thinking about the Boomtown Rats since I was using their celebrated second album, A Tonic for the Troops , to keep me running around Hyde Park in the warm sunshine last Monday afternoon. More often than not I use music these days to help drive myself along.

I once read in a physics textbook that if an atom were to be magnified to the size of London’s Wembley Stadium, the nucleus at the centre would be about as big as a hazelnut. Well screw that, because I can think of much better uses for Wembley Stadium. Besides the obvious — football — it is of course an ideal venue for rock concerts and last Friday night U2 showed exactly how it should be done.

There is something inherently confessional in a blog, even in a science blog. There is an urge to reveal—do you feel it?—that is normally kept safely in check. Mine is pretty well locked down. And yet I admire those who, on occasion, have cast off their reins and opened their hearts with great honesty. I think particularly of Richard’s pieces on “depression” and, more recently, faith.