Here is a brief guide to some unfortunate explosions of a particular type. The details sit quietly in back issues of medical journals. Only occasionally does anyone come to see them. The visitor is, in most cases, either a doctor in sudden need of information or a scholar in search of violent titillation…. So begins […]
Month: June 2005
Further puzzling solutions
The "Puzzling Solutions" column in the special Security Issue of the Annals of Improbable Research presents several more from our collection of puzzle solutions to which we have lost the puzzles.
Fear thy family roots
"Genealogists want psychotherapy to be made available for people who stumble across unpleasant discoveries while researching their family history." This statement, with copious supporting detail, is in a report in the April 17, 2005 issue of The Daily Telegraph. (Thanks to Juanita Browne for bringing this to our attention.)
Cold spikes of interest
Ice spikes can, and do, form in freezer ice cube trays. The how and why of it are now fairly clear, thanks to research carried out by K. G. Libbrecht and K. Lui at the Caltech Physics Department. There is the pre-print (it’s not clear where and when it will become a post-preprint) of Libbrecht […]
Clearly, in Jeopardy
Investigator Carol Springs writes to clarify an item in the June issue of mini-AIR: One point that dozens of others have probably made by now, but just in case:>> "Ig Nobel Prizes" was a>> category on the June 1, 2005 >> broadcast of the television program>> "Jeopardy." Contestants were presented >> with the following answers:>> […]
June mini-AIR
The June issue of mini-AIR just went out. It introduces the Stroop vs. Smoot debate, and salutes the Bureau of Glottal Affairs, among other things.
Deus ex masochism
Investigator Amos Omondi writes to recommend an invention that never gets quite enough attention: UNITED STATES PATENT 6293874: "User-operated amusement apparatus for kicking the user’s buttocks"INVENTOR: Armstrong; Joe W. (Lenoir, Tennessee)ABSTRACT: An amusement apparatus including a user-operated and controlled apparatus for self-infliction of repetitive blows to the user’s buttocks by a plurality of elongated arms […]
Magnetism, Mingus, and Shaftesbury
Edmund Shaftesbury has somehow lost his magnetic grip on education. His once-famous name bounced up in January in a report issued by the US Library of Congress about its collection of items pertaining to the jazz musician Charles Mingus. In box 71, the report says, "is a book titled Cultivation of Personal Magnetism in Seven […]
Tom Lehrer at a math lecture
Video of Tom Lehrer performing at a math lecture (the occasion was a tribute to a fellow mathematician) is a rare and wonderful thing to see. So is Mike Stanfill’s animated version of Tom Lehrer’s tour de force "The Elements."
VD is for everybody
VD is for everybody, or so says a musical movie of that name.