Mariano Crociata: a name, a promise. The general secretary of CEI (the Italian Episcopal Conference) secures a spot in the front page of Italian newspapers today by declaring that pharmacists in Italy should be allowed to object to the distribution of pharmaceuticals enabling " clearly immoral choices", like abortion. I wonder why he stopped short of asking for the removal of condoms from the counters. Hmmm, let me guess: a sudden change of mind about birth control ? Or just the knowledge that it would be too large an economical loss for pharmacy owners to self-flagellate that way ?
Ready for another turn into National-Enquirer mode of particle physics reporting ? I have a figure to discuss. It is a result now a few months old, but one which received little attention -less than it should have, perhaps. I myself got to see it only a few weeks ago in a presentation given by Jacobo Konigsberg, CDF spokesperson, at a workshop in Bologna.
The scandalistic cut of this article is manifest in the title: facing a dearth of exciting reports of new physics discoveries, we are bound to now and then swerve off the path of our usual responsible handling of two-sigma effects, odd deviations, and assorted zoology. It is, I believe, a necessary resource to rely on, if we are to keep the interest of Science readers on particle physics.
A friend told me this funny anecdote about the construction of a part of the inner tracker of the CDF detector called "ISL", the so-called "intermediate silicon layers" which were constructed in Italy and then sent to Fermilab for installation in the core of CDF.
A technician reports: "When we were finished with the construction and we had to move to Fermilab to install the device, he took extreme care to arrange the shipment of the expensive, sensitive device overseas in three parts, with three separate cargos, such that if a plane had an accident, we would only lose a third of the detector.
...However, he sent us (all the technicians who had done the assembly, and were now needed at Fermilab for the installation) all in the same plane!"
As I mentioned yesterday, I was able to put together a proceedings paper on the "Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the CMS Detector" with the help of a collaborator, Eleni Petrakou. The article will be available on the ArXiv preprint server tomorrow, or even today by clicking on the picture below, which shows part of the first page. The article is quite simple to read and quite short. It should be readable by anybody, not just experts. I will be available to answer any question you may have on its contents, as always. Enjoy!
Just a note, awaiting for my submission to the arxiv, to mention that
my request here for a ghost writer to help me put together a proceedings paper for the
PIC 2009 conference has been successful.
Turning 60
On The Illusion Of Time And The Strange Economy Of Existence
RIP - Hans Jensen
2026 Plans
I have known Marco Cardin for a couple of years because besides being an accomplished amateur astro-imager he is also an avid visual observer. His encyclopedic knowledge of the night sky wonders is a great help on the field during the monthly night-long observations in dark, moonless nights we spend on the eastern Alps, trying to squeeze the most out of the 16" Dobson telescopes we carry with us. These instruments have no fancy "go-to" features, but with Marco's help and organization we can frame close to 100 rarely seen objects per night. 
