Fake Banner
Highlights From MODE And EUCAIF

After a month of intense travel, which among other things included attendance to the MODE Workshop...

Win A MSCA Post-Doctoral Fellowship!

Applications for MSCA Post-doctoral fellowships are on, and will be so until September 10 this...

The Anomaly That Wasn't: An Example Of Shifting Consensus In Science

Time is a gentleman - it waits patiently. And in physics, as in all exact sciences, problems and...

An Innovative Proposal

The other day I finally emerged from a very stressful push to submit two grant applications to...

User picture.
picture for Patrick Lockerbypicture for Hank Campbellpicture for Heidi Hendersonpicture for Bente Lilja Byepicture for Sascha Vongehrpicture for Johannes Koelman
Tommaso DorigoRSS Feed of this column.

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 »

Blogroll
In a few days italian post-docs working in high-energy physics will be asked to gather for a nasty exam, held by the INFN -the italian institute for nuclear physics- to qualify valiant researchers for future hiring in the institute.

The exam generated a wave of outrage among the very pool of people at which it is aimed: the scores of "precari" (temporary workers) who are spending the best years of their life to try and make a career in particle physics.  Let me explain why that is so.
After weeks of painful struggling against all evidence, I think I will finally have to accept the fact that Italians actually approve their Prime Minister's behavior and libertine sex habits: the final proof be that they still voted for his lackeys at the last round of administrative elections. However, being a male in a male chauvinist country, I feel I am not very well represented by Berlusconi in this regard. Please consider:





  • he is almost 73 years old;




  • he is constantly afflicted by neck pain, which for sure must prevent him from anything but the most basic reproductory capabilities;




  • he fought a prostate cancer, which certainly took a hit in his sexual performances;
Augusto Minzolini (right), director of the TG1 news program of Rai 1, the most followed public italian TV channel, is under siege in Italy, accused of hiding the news of the embarassing story of Berlusconi and the call girl Patrizia D'Addario and the surrounding affair, which continued to make headlines on World press, but was utterly absent from Rai 1 TV news for over a week.
If you live outside Italy, you read newspapers more often than Italians do. Thus, you probably are more informed about the recent scandal emerging on the private life of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister, than Italians. That is because the news of Berlusconi's private parties with scores of young women, paid or otherwise compensated to cheer up the leader, have never made it to italian television!
Prologue
Stimulated by Michael White  (who just posted his Morning Science Quote,  "Light is the principal means by which we are able to transmit and receive information from objects around us and throughout the universe"), here is my answer, this week's Say of the Week :
"The reason why some people appear bright until you hear them speak is that light travels faster than sound".