Welcome to "science week" at my humble blog. To begin: the standout in the Nobel Prize awards this year, the one likely most fascinating to observers outside the field itself, is ... Medicine. This year's award for advances in medicine went to researchers who opened up new vistas in the study of immunity. Immunity, and related matters such as vaccination -- these have been on a lot of minds of non-experts since the Covid epidemic, and even more intensely since a rogue member of the Kennedy family became the US Secretary of Health. The apotheosis of the non-expert. The Nobel Prize winners were rewarded for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance. Breaking that down a bit: "immune tolerance" means simply that our immune systems tolerate our own tissue. The system doesn't go after our own tissue in the ways it goes after foreign matter. So ... anyone who doesn't have an autoimmune disorder such as lupus or multiple sclerosis by definit...