One of my first memories is myself, 5 years old, going to my mother and declare to her, as serious as only children can be: “I will be a scientist.” Yesterday night I was in my office in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge packing my stuff, resolved to not go back …
Author Archives: devicerandom
Serious business, at last
It had to happen, and, if anything, what is surprising is that it took so much time. The whole point of the cables Wikileaks affair is not in the novel insights on USA politics (quite few so far), or on who controls Assange (if anyone -Putin’s declarations sound ominous however) or who really is for …
What has changed in science and what must change – I. Rethink the scientific career.
I have been pointed today by my friend and brilliant scientist Giorgio Gilestro to an interesting blog post of his on how science should change. My reaction was “This is really really interesting and raises a lot of fundamental issues; yet I disagree almost entirely.” However 1)it’s really good food for thought and 2)you can’t …
The Prisoner has finished
After more than a week alone at home, with incipient bronchitis, and thriving on dubious pseudofood, I am back in my office. Somehow, I am not convinced it is a good idea. Highlights of the latest forced homestaying: - Getting a 1 p.m. - 4 a.m. circadiam rythm - Understanding that kebab-laced focaccia is not …
Why did they win?
Why did insects win? The question, to me, is not peregrine. Arthropoda include a lot of moderately to robustly successful terrestrial groups: Arachnida and the classes below subphylum Myriapoda (millipedes, centipedes and siblings) among all others. Yet, imagine a world without millipedes: would you really notice? Imagine a world without arachnids: there would be no …
A call to whistleblowers in geophysics: make Enzo Boschi irrelevant
This blog/site is still very much a thing in progress ; yet I can’t stay silent on what I’ve just read on La Repubblica. For non-Italian speakers: Apparently, prof. Enzo Boschi, head of the Italian Geophysics and Vulcanology Institute, is talking about “not making our data available via Web anymore, because they are used to …
I now understand conspiracy theorists
Conspiracy theorists -you know, the guys who simply refuse to admit that people walked on the Moon, or that climate is indeed changing- always escaped my comprehension. I never understood how can someone refuse to acknowledge the hard facts and refuge himself in a kind of common-sense-laden wool nest (by the way, “common sense” is …
13.04°
let’s welcome the new blog with a double funeral. on one hand francesco cossiga, ex-Italian politician and ex-President of the Republic, is dead. this will make a lot of my readers rejoice, but I am quite saddened by that. Cossiga was, above all, gifted by an absolutely zesty lucid madness, of a theatrical kind. also, …