The remains of what probably was Marni Dee Sheppeard were found last week in the mountains of the west coast of New Zealand, near Otira. Although a positive identification is still pending, this does seem to mean that Marni has died while hiking in her beloved mountains, some time between mid November and December of last year.

Almost exactly 15 years ago, I was following a nice conference in the Azores island of San Miguel, where I witnessed with a bit of gloom how the Standard Model was capable of explaining to the tiniest level all observed features not only of electroweak physics observables, but also of low-energy hadronic physics in weak decays of bottom hadrons, from a number of different experiments. I especially remember a talk by Guido Martinelli, among others, who was remarking that if new physics was there, it was really well concealed.

Ok, don't get me wrong here - the title of this post is not meant to mock my LHCb colleagues. I have friends there, and the experiment has been doing amazing physics in the past decade, with scores of new particles found, and tough questions posed to the data and to the Standard Model.

Last Monday at 10.30AM I eagerly queued up at the International Red Cross site of Padova, the town where I live and work, to receive a first vaccination shot against Covid-19. I duly received my dose and went back home with some relief. Little did I know that my relief would turn to anger very soon. 
My anger arose when I soon heard the news that the treatment with the vaccine I had been given, Astra-Zeneca, was being temporarily stopped, following the detection of a possible adverse reaction. But you should read on before you conclude that I am an idiot (as you indeed should, if the above was all there is to it).

The Italian "Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei" is an old institution, founded in 1603 to promote and cultivate natural science studies. It counted Galileo Galilei as a member, and it has never ceased to pursue its goal. Nowadays, it is an excellence cultural centre and is among the advisors of the President of the Republic.