I would like to adduce the late H.C. Brown as a shining example. Who, during the 1970s and 80s, did not groan on seeing yet another paper from Professor Brown? Variation after variation on his boron reagents poured forth, each with slightly different characteristics and reactivity, later superseded by other variations in the endless series. […]
Month: August 2006
Jon Daniel Davey joins LFHCfS
Jon Daniel Davey has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. He says: I have long hair since I was 11 except for not avoiding the draft. My reseach deals with the development of cognitive representtion of children in large scale environments. Jon Daniel Davey Professor of Architecture Southern Illinois University Carbondale Carbondale, Illinois, […]
Apartment wrestling for historians
Historians can spend eons wrestling what’s called “he largest permanent archive of apartment wrestling images from the 70’s and 80’s.” (Thanks to investigators Susan O’Hanlon, Lani Durkins and Traci Chaplin-Ellis for bringing this to our attention.)
Horses and flies
Investigator John Splettstoesser discusses a research question posed (in “The Friendship Letter,” No. 50, 2006) by his friend Michael Cooney: Observations of groups of horses standing freely in a field have led to an intriguing question about their behavior in fly season, when flies attack them with vigor. Quite often horses stand side by side […]
The prostate and the watermelon
Nothing could be better for a prostate on a hot summer day than a nice piece of cold watermelon. So say Stephen Reucroft and John Swain in a July 13, 2000 Boston Globe report. The report does not specify a best route for transporting the watermelon to the prostate.
TRAVEL ALERT: bring a gel-filled bra
We encourage everyone to pack gel-filled bras in their checked baggage. So says the U.S. Transportation Security Agency, in its advisory for airplane passengers.
When Jasmuheen met Deepak
Mexico was the site of an historic meeting between two Ig Nobel Prize winners. 2000 Ig Nobel Prize Literature Prize winner Jasmuheen (honored for her book “Living on Light,” which explains that although some people do eat food, they don’t ever really need to) recently met 1998 Ig Nobel Prize winner Deepak Chopra (honored for […]
Dressed in the dark
Why do Bedouins wear black robes in hot deserts? The question so intrigued four scientists – all non-Bedouins – that they did an experiment. Their study, called Why Do Bedouins Wear Black Robes in Hot Deserts?, was published in the journal Nature a quarter of a century ago. “It seems likely,” the scientists wrote, “that […]
Of esteem indicators (by way of cohabitation)
WOMEN eat more unhealthy foods and tend to put on weight when they move in with a male partner, according to a new report by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. On the other hand, a man’s diet tends to become healthier when he starts cohabiting with a female partner – and her influence has […]
Political science: Alaska
Alaska, the large yet little-populated, northenmost state in the USA, fascinates political scientists. This campaign poster (for the current governor’s re-election campaign) shows that politics is not just a science — it’s a sweet science. Visit the campaign’s web site to see a larger version of the poster, and to hear the accompanying fight song. […]