This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are the beginnings of each of them: Spacey superpowers — Some people have a superior knowledge, and maybe control, of space and direction. That is evident in the harvest from Feedback’s call to identify trivial superpowers – a person’s ability to reliably do […]
If you have long longed for a product with a long, long name, your wait is potentially nearly over. You can choose to find and purchase a “Custom Printed Aluminum Foil Mylar Kraft Paper Stand up Flat Bottom Side Gusset Food Grade Packaging Bag Pouch with Zipper Recyclable Barrier Rice Coffee Bag“.
“The Nobel Peace Prize had never been awarded to a character whose work has been to reduce armies and their weapons permanently. For this reason, in 1991, and with a didactic desire, an alternative Committee was created that awards the Ig Nobel prizes…” — So writes Antonio German Torres, in his essay [here translated from […]
Much can be learned from a calculating study of cartoon animals behaving in ways that are natural to them. Here is a new example: “Tauberian identities and the connection to Wile E. Coyote physics,” Roberto Camassa and Richard M. McLaughlin, arXiv:2304.06127, 2023. (Thank to Mason Porter for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Helluva Twist — CHARLES DICKENS and his writings are still being “interrogated” (that’s the word in use) by scholars, at least one of whom is almost electrified by what might be there.Jeremy Parrott, an antiquarian bookseller […]
“Total body water was determined by deuterium oxide dilution in 17 normal male subjects with a range of 55.9% to 70.2% and an average value of 61.8% of body weight. Eleven normal females ranged from 45.6% to 59.9% with an average of 51.9%, or 9.9% less than the males. These total body water figures have […]
“Cool? Or Just Clunky? The Fight Over Dashboard Touch Screens,” says a headline today in the New York Times. Without mentioning it, the Times report tells of the aftermath of technology that was honored thirty years ago with an Ig Nobel Prize. The Times explains: do-it-all touch screens, the nerve centers of many new cars, have […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Find the emperor’s heart — Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great certainly wasn’t, in the purest medical sense, heartless. But now he is. The search is on to find his missing heart, though it isn’t abundantly […]
The influence of the Ig Nobel Prize slowly seeps into academia — especially in techniques for piquing people’s curiosity and attention. Here’s a new, 2023 example. The Harvard Gazette, in a report headlined “The snappy book talk: ‘When does that happen in academia?’ ” tells of an innovative event: “Scholars had seven minutes to explain […]
For pure intellectual and verbal verve and daring, few fields of research rival that of Accounting Auditing Control. An audaciously provocative new example appears in the journal Accounting Auditing Control: “Rhizomic Digitized Surveillance, Contradictions, and Managerial Control Practice: Insights from the Société Générale Scandal,” by Aziza Laguecir and Bernard Leca (published in vol. 29, no. […]