Dancing in the Rain(forest)

Ok, it was 10 days ago, but many of you have asked me about it so...
A PhD exam is a very simple affair: you prepare a thesis (mainly by copy-and-paste from your article(s)), give it to a referee, then prepare a 45-minutes talk. Then you simply give this talk in front of a commission composed by: your advisor, your referee, a bunch of other people who are advisor or referees of other people, some prof related to these last people, and your parents. The difficult part, as you may guess, are your parents. After you have finished your talk (that you have prepared with a really great care, putting inside it many puns and jokes, to keep the audience from sleeping and snoring - which is uneducated, but unavoidable if you limit yourself to the technicalities), your referees and the other people are free to ask you all the questions they want, from the trivial to the sublime.
I was already on friendly terms with my referee, so we joked a bit even when we were not agreeing on some technical point. In the end, it was fun. And my sister keeps teasing me about one of my referee's comment, about a supposed correlation between two variable, that I believe is weak. I'd said: "they correlate, more or less.." when my referee said: "Come on, Tommaso!! Not 'more or less'! Perfectly! They correlate perfectly!". I still hold that the correlation is weak.
The comment my referee give to me when the exam was over was: "Fantastic results. Good talk. You really need to find someone to translate your thesis from Tommaso-english to real english". :-) Some of you think to know english well enough to do a professional work over it? If so, please step on! I will offer you a dinner for a good work!

With the PhD exams of these days, many friends of mine have finished their stay at Sissa (my PhD school) and are heading to new destinations. One of my flatmates, Demian Alessandro Battaglia, leaved some day ago, and I know that I'll miss him. But "morto un papa, se ne fa un altro" (="When a Pope dies, another comes", italian proverb), and so tomorrow the new flatmate will arrive in Trieste. He is a young russian that will be a PhD stutdent in mathematics. His name? Alexei Demyanov...
Everything shoud change in order for everything to stay the same.

Uhm... I've realized just now that I can't be a student anymore... I've just earned the highest title of study available.
And the ironic thing is that I begin to find something to study that really enthusiasm me only now... (Bayesian Inference)
Not that I haven't enjoyed all the thing that I've studied before, but I feel that if I don't pay enough attention to my schedule organization I will end up without the time to learn new things... which is the primary motivation to the career I've chosen!
So, it's time to a bold proclamation: I will never let a day pass by without learning something new and useful, in Physics or in the fields to which I will apply Physics methods. It's more than my job, I want it to be my way of life.
Mmmh, the hours after midnight make me sooo serious... time for a shower now (tomorrow they shut down the hydraulic system of the house for all the day).

Fun fact: Demian and me refer to Giacomo as "the PhD student". It's the only one left in the house now :-) At least until Friday, when Demian leave :-(

As somebody of you already know, from friday I'm no more a Ph.D. student, but "only" a Ph.D. :-)))) Random items in my "to do" list:
1) I have to find someone willing to translate my thesis from "my english" to "english-spoken-by-the-rest-of-the-world". :-) (Any volunteer?)
2) I have to understand how to delete comments here on Blogger: I hate spam (see the post below...) EDIT: found the way and deleted the onbnoxious comment. :-)
3) I want to go in Portoroz for a sauna!!
4) Installing LUSH.
5) Reading the book of Jaynes ("Probability Theory, the logic of science", I'm already beyond the half of it!)

...is that I can't sleep with the windows open. I SO love the smell of night.

We need bands like this one. If you find some, drop me a mail. I am SO tired of the music they pass on the radio...

I will defend my Ph.D. thesis in Friday 21st October. As it happens too often, you have all the good and cool ideas about some research you can do just in times when you don't have the time to do it... But on the other hand a thesis defense it's a lot of fun :-) I like to give talks, especially when I have the occasion to put up a bit of show :-)) I'm thinking about some joke to put in the talk I have to give, I'll keep you posted. But suggestions are welcome! (especially from people who already have seen my talks).

P.S. Bonus prize for the first able to spot the quote in the title of this post.

The equation "Scientific Theory" = "Falsifiable Theory" is false. Period. I had enough of people reading Popper without the understanding that "Science" is not the "Popper's idea of Science". Popper had is limits (one among all: in his "propensity" theory about the plausibility of scientific theories he completely misses the difference between "logical implication" and "physical causation"). I can't understand why I have always to justify my work under the view of a philosopher, good as he is. On this point he were wrong. It is so hard to accept?
My guess is that people (scientist and non-scientist) are still using the popperian definition of science because it's easy. "Falsifiability" is a good slogan, everyone can use it, especially people that can't understand how real science works.
Less Slogans, More Science! (This could become a good slogan...)

It has all: living dead, blood & gore, good plot, suspense, alternative (?) explanations of reality. But it's better than usual horror stories. It is REAL. Go and read the very origin of the gothic culture. Our story begins in 1347, when...
Caution: graphic images. Not for the squeamish. Don't say I've not warned you...

Go and sign. No Excuses. It's more important than you think.