2007 Ig Nobel Economics Prize winner Hsieh Kuo-cheng — who was feared to be dead or missing — is alive and well. And apparently, he is pleased at winning an Ig Nobel Prize. A November 5 Taipei Times article reports: Ig Nobel winner talks inspiration Imagine this: A robber goes into a bank with a […]
Month: November 2007
The un-fictionalization of cell-phone jammers
Ten years after the then-fictional invention (in our column in Byte magazine) of the cell-phone jammer, the New York Times reports, on November 4, 2007, that the device is now quite real ? and that it enjoys widespread use by people who enjoy using it: Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button […]
Rat surfing video
It is entirely possible that the producers had a good reason for making a video of rats on surfboards. These rat experiments (if that’s the correct word for them) are presumably not related directly to the well-known phenomenon of skateboarding bulldog experiments. (Thanks to investigator Sandy Durkee for bringing this to our attention.)
New yawning tool for interviewers
Yawning is ? or at least could be ? the basis of a new conceptual tool for anyone who conducts job interviews. For certain jobs, interviewers want to know whether an applicant does or does not have so-called “autistic” qualities. These qualities presumably let a person focus intently on a particular task. Depending on the […]
Finger Celebrities (Part 1 of 2)
Aside from jewellers, who are today’s finger measurement celebrities? Let’s take a look. They – and many other researchers – are building professional reputations by measuring people’s fingers. These digerati specialise in comparing the length of a person’s second finger with the length of the fourth finger. In technical lingo, this comparison of digit lengths […]
All on, or in, the head
As for this ad campaign, it is utter genius. With this one 10-second spot, the makers of HeadOn have torn down all the pretenses that have gummed up the advertising industry for years. Production values? persuasion? Emotion? Humor (of the intentional kind)? These are stalwarts of the old, outmoded advertising paradigm. The new, head-on (or […]