Researchers and academics below the full-professor level in Italy are currently busy with an idle exercise - putting together their applications to a selection for would-be assistant and full professors. By the way, this is happening to me as well, so you may understand why this blog has received little attention from me this past week: the occupation is extremely time-consuming.
Becoming university professors in Italy in the last few decades has been a rather complicated business, where the merit of candidates was often overshadowed by favouritisms and private interests.
Today I feel as American as I've ever felt.
I've lived there for a while, and of course as a foreigner I have many things I love and many I hate about this remarkable country. But today, Americans electing Obama as President for four more years send a message. They say that the attempts at creating a more just society, one where some basic rights of citizens are not ran over by the interests of big corporations, are valued by the American people just as some of us living in another continent do.
While New Yorkers (and others on the east US coast) prepare to deal with hurricane Sandy and the possible water surge resulting from the very strong winds and low pressure of the system, a similar situation is expected in Venice on Wednesday; unlike New Yorkers, Venetians are rather accustomed to the phenomenon - familiarly called "acqua alta" (high water) by residents. However, when the level of water is exceptionally high, normal protection systems to shops, offices, and ground floors of homes prove insufficient.
That is probably going to be the case in the evening of October 31st, when the tide is expected to reach to the level of +1.40 meters above average sea level, due to a combination of factors -low pressure, full moon, winds.
As I
reported in a post a few days ago, the Italian sentencing of seven scientists to 6-years imprisonment for their misassessment of the risks of the population of L'Aquila, soon thereafter struck by a powerful earthquake which killed 309 and injured 2000, raised interest and disconcertment worldwide and spurred a debate which is not likely to end soon.
Who is guilty ?
Let me write here a short note -just for the record- to mention a proceedings paper I wrote for the ICFP 2012 conference. I spoke in Crete last June about the latest results of the CMS experiment, but in the meantime a lot happened -the Higgs boson discovery, just to mention one thing. So this writeup includes the new measurements of Higgs boson cross section, mass, and properties that the CMS experiment has produced since last July, as well as selected results in top and electroweak physics, searches for rare B decays, and new physics searches.
Italy is a beautiful, crazy country. Take today's verdict, which condemns seven scientists (
Franco Barberi, Enzo Boschi, Mauro Dolce, Bernardo De Bernardinis, Giulio Selvaggi, Claudio Eva, and Gianmichele Calvi) to six years of prison, plus a huge fine, for allegedly reassuring the population about the unlikelihood of an earthquake on the eve of the
devastating shock of April 6th, 2009, which caused 309 deaths and destroyed most of the mid-size town of L'Aquila, in central Italy.
Letter To A Demanding PhD Supervisor
Letter To A Future AGI
Living At The Polar Circle
