I was quite saddened today to hear the bad news that Uli Baur passed away prematurely yesterday. Uli was a professor of physics at the University at Buffalo, and his research interests focused on electroweak phenomenology. I knew Uli as I worked with him in a workshop at Fermilab, when we tried to determine the Run II potential of the Tevatron in the physics of weak bosons. He was a brilliant theorist, known for his good manners and charm. He was also a CMS collaborator (although I did not know that! We are simply too many in these large collaborations...)

"I learned the stopping-rule principle from Professor Barnard in conversation in the summer of 1952. Frankly, I then thought it a scandal that anyone in the profession could advance an idea so patently wrong, even as today I can scarcely believe that some people resent an idea so patently right."

L.J. Savage

I am very happy to report here (after having done the same on my Greek blog first, for a change) that the "Max Planck" medal for 2011 has been assigned to Giorgio Parisi, a distinguished Italian theoretical physicist. I first got the welcome news from Facebook, thanks to my e-friendship with Parisi.

They start bad but they improve with time. I cannot say I like Pope Benedikt XVI yet, but I have the feeling that he is getting better as he ages, pretty much like Pope Johannes Paul II, Karol Woytila. Woytila started his adventure as a Pope by playing the head of state, flying overseas to shake hands with dictators, spelling pages over pages of reactionary speeches -and then he improved. He become, so to speak, more human: a strange feat for a man whose mandate was to impersonate the link between Man and God.