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Enrico Stomeo - A Lifelong Passion For Meteor Studies

I was reached this evening by the news of the passing of a dear friend, Enrico Stomeo. Enrico was...

Surviving Queues: 1 - At The Airport

Nobody likes to wait in line. Whether you are sitting in your car waiting to reach the toll booths...

Choosing Your Bets: The Selection Bias

As some of the long-time readers of this blog know, in this column I have occasionally discussed...

Have A Master In Science, Want A Post-Doc Position Directly?

Do you have a master in Science, and want to start a Post-Doc position directly? You can have it...

Tommaso Dorigo

Tommaso Dorigo is an experimental particle physicist, who works for the INFN at the University of Padova, and collaborates with the CMS and the SWGO experiments. He is the president of the Read More »

Personal Highlights of 2010

Jan 01 2011 | comment(s)

I know that some of the visitors of this blog are surprised to find personal stuff in my column every now and then. However, a blog is an online diary, and I do leave here my personal thoughts if I feel like it. This is one of those times. If you are not curious nor interested you are thus advised to visit some other physics-full post, for example this recent one here. In this post I wish to discuss my personal achievements and failures, my highs and lows of the past year.

All in all, 2010 was a good year for me, for several reasons. Let me provide some highlights in random order.

Yearly Blog Report - 2010

Jan 01 2011 | comment(s)

The sudden switch from one to another provider of visit statistics last September prevents an accurate assessment of how this blog fared in 2010. However I can collect some information from some in-site tools.

The pages of this blog have received a total of 716,886 hits in 2010, or an average of 1964 daily hits. The best month was July, which scored by itself about 140,000 hits, largely although not exclusively thanks to a highly linked, controversial post.

WCSJ 2011

Dec 27 2010 | comment(s)

Some shameful self-propaganda is in order today... Such posts have usually borne good fruits in the past, so why not!

One In A Million Shots...

Dec 26 2010 | comment(s)

Dynamics can be surprising at times, even when applied to well-understood and tested physical systems such as a basketball and a basket. Look what happened to a free shot executed by Kamyl Kawrzydek in a match between Idaho State University and Utah State University, played at Gossner's Invitational: the ball bounces on the basket, and then stops there for three full seconds, before eventually dropping into the basket.

Physics Forecasts For 2011

Dec 26 2010 | comment(s)

Betting a grand on the existence or not of new physics is cool, but one does not need to be that daring (or to be that daring every other day) to enjoy the game of making predictions for what the fundamental research in experimental particle physics will discover or measure in a future close enough that we can reasonably expect to experience ourselves. So here I am, at the end of this eventful 2010, to look forward rather than backward, with no additional grand to invest but some insight to use, some reputation to waste, and a bit of humour to stuff between the lines.

Rumors About An Old Rumor

Dec 25 2010 | comment(s)

Some unforeseen Christmas-vigil blog activity bringing here a few visitors more than average was traced today back to BBC News, who discussed the 2010 science highlights here.

The incoming link is in this paragraph:

The evolving role of the blogosphere in science came to the fore as particle physicists were preparing to gather in Paris for their annual conference. Internet rumours suggested that the US Tevatron particle smasher had seen hints of the elusive Higgs boson.