Joel Slemrod and Wojciech Kopczuk have found evidence that people will do pretty much anything for money – even die for it. They tell us all about it in a study called Dying to Save Taxes. Economists like to believe that people make rational decisions and base all their actions on cool self-interest. In the […]
Month: November 2007
November mini-AIR
The November issue of mini-AIR just went out. Topics include: Triumph of the Brians (1 and 2); Proof Less Strange Poet (triumph and nitpicker); Caffeine and the Learned Honey Bee; Crabs, Yawns, Stools, Frogs and a Jerk; Learning and Hooking; etc. (If you would like to have mini-AIR automatically sent to your email box every […]
When you point out a problem…
when you point out a problem with the evidence, people don’t engage with you about it, or read and reference your work. They get into a huff. They refuse to answer calls or email queries. They wave their hands and mutter sciencey words such as “quantum” and “nano”. They accuse you of being a paid […]
Sidney Coleman has left the planet
Investigator Betsy Devine writes with sad news: It happened on Sunday, November 18, peacefully, without pain, after long illness. To several generations of physicists, Sidney was guru, clown-prince, and zen-master. Sidney was the centerpiece of a thousand stories from the time that he was just a loud-mouthed brilliant fifteen year-old aka Squidney rampaging into Chicago?s […]
Five old crabs, and a fresh one
One month after both Dutch and international media reported about my efforts to obtain pubic lice for the collection of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam (see an earlier post on this subject), it is my pleasure to report that the museum received a mere total of six crab specimens: five almost 60 year old dry-preserved, […]
Hair club member makes good
Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) member Brian May, who recently completed his PhD in astronomy from Imperial College London, was today named as chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University. Click on the photo below to see the university’s official announcement. Dr. May is also lead guitarist for the rock group Queen, a post […]
Suggestive research: Sex and pain
Sexual fantasies increase pain tolerance Bringing to mind a favorite sexual fantasy may be a good way to lessen pain, according to a recent study of college students by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Wisconsin. The work, which tests the authors’ theory about the relationship between pain and mood, could produce simple, […]
Gay parades: Weapons of mass destruction
Investigator Bessel Mangols alerts us to what he or she describes as “a wonderfully perplexing news report, with an equally perplexing photo, about the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, I think.” The report is from Interfax, dated October 9, 2007. Here are excerpts: Orthodox human rights activist: gay-parades should be equated with weapons of mass […]
Ethics survey
We recently received a note from the United States Professional Sales Organization (UPSA), an organization hitherto unknown to us. It says, in part: Dear UPSA Member: First of all, to those who have participated in the recent PhD survey — thank you! We have no way of knowing who you are to exclude you from […]
The parallel adventures of Matt Talbot
Matt Talbot’s corpse-girdling chains and cords are what attracted scholars’ attention. But those scholars, like almost everyone else, utterly ignored the man while he was alive. Later, when analysts wrote about Talbot, some did it with reverence, others with joking contempt. The two camps agree on the basic facts, but differ utterly on the explanation…. […]