There are few peer-reviewed papers on the subject of designing and testing an improved packaging for hollow chocolate bunnies. Of these articles, the most bouncily thorough is one called “Designing and Testing an Improved Packaging for Large Hollow Chocolate Bunnies.” So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.
Month: January 2004
Bureaucratic Hand
“The bureaucratic hand meets with the Bureacracy Club.” So saying, a wishes-to-be-unnamed member of the latter has sent a link to a photograph of the former. See the photo here. The Bureaucracy Club’s home page is, as always, here.
Bureaucracy Club’s New Red Tape
The Bureaucracy Club is abuzz at the discovery of a new red tape taskforce. Investigator Tim Churches sends word of the existence of the GP Red Tape Task Force. A perfectly bureaucratic Task Force PDF can be accessed here. The Bureaucracy Club now hopes to find web pages for additional official Red Tape Task Forces, […]
Numbers Mirror Smoke Hazard
How dangerous is marijuana? Thanks to Dr Peter Maguire and his careful use of basic mathematics, now we know. Details are in a January 21, 2004 news report from Reuters (read the full report here): “Cannabis is a drug that can kill,” Dr Peter Maguire, deputy chairman of the BMA’s board of science told Reuters. […]
Upside-Down, and Diagnosis
The phrase “upside-down, into the void” sums up a report in the BMJ (vol. 328,January 17, 2004, p. 176): A 67 year old man presented with lower urinary tract symptoms and many episodes of near-acute urinary retention, which he found, by trial and error, he avoided by standing on his head for 5-10 minutes each […]
Murphy’s Law at Caltech
George Nichols, who helped give birth to Murphy’s Law, will make an exceedingly rare public appearance tomorrow night (Jan 27) at Caltech. He was head of the project at Edwards Air Force Base in California where, in 1949, he, Colonel John Paul Stapp, and Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr. jointly, if disjointedly, gave rise to […]
Trinkaus and the Mammoth Cheese
“Ode on the Mammoth Cheese” gained new prominence when John W. Trinkaus accepted his Ig Nobel Literature Prize in 2003. Trinkaus was presented with a special framed copy of the famous 1884 cheese poem, a copy signed by four Nobel Laureates. Read about it in the Nov/Dec 2003 issue of the magazine, or read it […]
Further Filth-in-Food
Investigators Golson and LaVin express their feelings about Sidebottom’s classic ‘Fundamentals of Microanalytical Entomology: A Practical Guide to Detecting and Identifying Filth in Foods’: INVESTIGATOR STEVE GOLSON Said Olsen, Sidebottom, and Knight, “Messy kitchens fill us with delight! All the insects and germs, And those lovely hookworms! Is our book about filth? Yes, that’s right!” […]
The Hair of Dr. Notkin
Dr. David Notkin and his fully robust beard have joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). You can see Dr. Notkin’s photograph and credentials at the LFHCfS home page. NOTICE: All LFHCfS member who will be in the Seattle area on Friday night, February 13, are invited to come to the Improbable Research […]
That Dangerous Language
One’s aspirations can kill – if Dr Sakae Inouye, of Otsuma Women’s University in Tokyo, is correct – and Chinese aspirations are particularly deadly. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.