If I may be permitted a moment of grumpiness: the vogue for road signs drawn by children is irritating. This photo shows but one example from my neighbourhood.

When you consider the care and attention paid by Margaret Calvert et al in the design of clear, readable road signs, the idea of having difficult to read distracting scribbles pasted about the place seems absurd. Yet, I’m sure I’ve read in the past that such signs actually reduce traffic speed and accident rates: still, it doesn’t mean I have to like them.

This is the £35m building in Gosforth which was intended to be the home of Northern Rock before it went belly-up. It’s now known as Partnership House.

This is a roof detail of Norman Foster’s £70m Sage Gateshead, home to the very fine Northern Sinfonia (lead by the charismatic Austrian Thomas Zehetmair) much more besides. It is undoubtedly one of the country’s finest music venues. Hall One’s acoustics are sublime, and whilst I’m personally less keen on Hall Two, the ten-sided performance space is still architecturally impressive.

Also, the Sir Michael Straker on the concourse is a great place to sit and work in relatively quiet café surroundings with free wifi.

The House of Commons authorities would be surprised if the clock tower fell into the Thames any time soon. It may well be raised with the Speaker on Monday. Given that Big Ben is situated over the Speaker’s apartments, he may have a view on it.

Thomas Docherty, a Labour MP on the Commons administration committee, according to this Sunday Times article.

Newcastle’s 1906 Central Arcade seems as busy today as ever!

This sad-looking Brutalist monolith is the former Newcastle-upon-Tyne branch of the Bank of England. It opened in 1971, and closed in 1997 when the Bank restructured.

It is to be demolished shortly, but – interestingly – the former gold bullion vaults underneath it are too strong to viably demolish, and so are to be left in place.

I would have thought that vaults of such strength would be enormously valuable to someone for something – even repurposed as a strong-walled emergency command centre or similar – but there they are, lying empty. And, it seems, there they will stay for many years to come!

The news reader announces a 30% chance of rain tomorrow. Thirty per cent of what? Most people in Berlin think that it will rain tomorrow 30% of the time. Others believe that it will rain tomorrow in 30% of the region. In New York the majority believe that it will rain on 30% of the days for which the prediction was made.

This is the (edited) opening of BMJ 2012;344:e245, a fascinating paper about single event probabilities by Gigerenza and Galesic. It’s only short, quite fun, and may convince you to change your practice. Well worth a read.

This ship, one of the world’s two full-size replicas of James Cook’s famous vessel, is permanently moored in Stockton-on-Tees, just round the corner from my office. And yes, it really is that sunny today.

I’ve been meaning to visit the Wellcome Collection for quite some time – I’ve been received the Trust’s newsletters via post for years. I finally found half an hour to pop in this morning, and would highly recommend it (though 30 minutes is clearly not long enough!). Above is William Cobbing’s Palindrome, an artistic expression of the fact that the pelvis and the skull are thought to share a common evolutionary bony ancestor.

And below, since I just couldn’t choose which photo to use today, is the complete human genome in printed form. Not only is it an impressive display of human achievement, it also provides a slightly depressing reminder of the relative weediness of the Y chromosome!

Both of these exhibits are from the Medicine Now exhibition, which is permanent, free, and well worth a visit.

No trip to London is complete without stopping off here to pick up supplies for my girlfriend: there’s nothing she likes better than a milk chocolate Ben’s cookie, with extra big chocolate chunks!