The communication of science to the general public is a subject dear to me, but unfortunately one that the majority of my colleagues neglect to consider as one to which to devote time and efforts.
In the last decade blogs have started to fill the huge gap that exists between scientific journals and general news media, a gap that no popularization magazine can bridge, given their restricted scope. More recently, I see efforts that employ video and graphics more heavily than before, and this is of course a step in the right direction - reading is harder, or at least less immediate, than watching an image or following a video clip.
So I was very happy to see that a colleague of mine -Luca Lista, a member of the CMS collaboration- has put up a site, "Con tratto al nero", where he puts to work his eccellent drawing skills (of which I was totally unaware, despite having worked together with him for the last couple of years in the statistics committee) producing humorous HEP cartoons.
The site is mainly aimed at Italian users, and his works are in Italian; however, given today's translation tools and the graphical nature of the product, I am sure that anybody can enjoy his production, except of course when not just the language, but also the scope of his humour, is aimed at Italians (see for instance some of his latest cartoons on the budgetary cuts to Italian research, where the protagonists may not be well known outside Italy).
I asked Luca to produce a cartoon in English for this blog, and he gladly sent me the one below. Enjoy, and please visit his site often !
