Cannot resist posting the following paperclip, grabbed from a news site this afternoon (it's a Sunday, a critical detail you should not overlook; and this is an Italian newspaper, as should be obvious).



The piece reports news on the Chilean earthquake. Here is a quick-and-dirty translation of the relevant part: "In Conception 350 buried under the rubble. Jackals in action. The government imposes the offside."

"We were not yet prepared to claim that we had found a new charged lepton, but we were ready to claim that we had found something new. To accentuate our uncertainty I denoted the new particle by U for unknown in some of our 1975-1977 papers. The name came later. This name was suggested by Rapidis, who was then a graduate student and had worked with me in the early 1970s on the problem. The letter is from the Greek for "third" -the third charged lepton".

It has become a pleasant habit for me to visit Bassano del Grappa every February for a conference on particle physics aimed at high-school students. Thanks to the efforts and the skill of dr. Sergio Lucisano, the schools of Bassano organize every year several conferences on physics and cosmology. These conferences are connected with the european program of the Masterclasses, but they extend the scope considerably into the history of physics and other topics of interest for the students.