A special Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will be held at the Festival della Scienza, in Genoa, Italy, on Friday night, October 24. It will begin at 9:00 pm, in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Palazzo Ducale. Two 2008 Ig Nobel Prize-winning teams will receive their Ig Nobel Prizes. (Both teams were unable to […]
Month: October 2008
Logic Lesson: How to identify a second-rate person
Italian member of the Parliament Gabriella Carlucci is giving logic lessons. Today’s lesson is the idea that: Anyone who does not have a Nobel Prize is at best second-rate. Carlucci has been making speeches and writing letters disparaging the work of Italian physicist Luciano Maiani. Carlucci, who does not yet have a Nobel Prize, sent […]
Plucked from Obscurity: Anti-Terrorism Mask
U.S. patent #7255627 was granted to Elena N. Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois, and Raphael C. Lee and Sandra Marijan of Chicago on August 14, 2007 for an “Garment device convertible to one or more facemasks.” Their intent, they say, is “to provide a garment which is operable to be converted into a facemask” and “to […]
H. Paul Shuch joins LFHCfS
H. Paul Shuch has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. He says: This photo shows me lecturing (?) this past summer at NRAO Green Bank, West Virginia. My hair speaks for itself. H. Paul Shuch, Ph.D., LFHCfS Executive Director Emeritus, The SETI League, Inc. Cogan Station Pennsylvania, USA
What’s wrong with baseball – mathematically that is?
Investigator Stanley Eigen writes: What’s wrong with baseball – mathematically that is? I don’t know but apparently G.H. Hardy did. Hardy was a pure mathematician in Cambridge. Outside of mathematics, he is probably best known as having recognized the Indian genius Ramanujan. Just to remind you, Ramanujan was a poor clerk in Madras with limited […]
October mini-AIR
The October issue of mini-AIR just went out. Topics include: Ig Nobel winners; Genoa presentation; tongue scraper poets, Delicious Guinea Pigs; Draculaic Disorders; Oddington, Genius, Ghoul; Almond/Dracula; Supersymmetry and Ghosts; etc. (If you would like to have mini-AIR automatically sent to your email box every month, please subscribe to it. It’s free.)
The Cingulate Cortex Does Everything
Here we explain most of the mysteries concerning the brain. We report the “Cingular Theory of Unification,” which postulates that one brain region — the “cingulate cortex” — is the alpha and omega, responsible for all of humankind’s functions. We believe that this theory not only explains the available data, but also prophesizes exponential growth […]
Mark Keusenkothen joins LFHCfS
Mark Keusenkothen has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. LFHCfS member Joseph J. Luczkovich, who nominated him, says: I would like to nominate my grad student (who enthusiastically agreed to be nominated, or else he does not get a PhD). Mark Keusenkothen, LFHCfS Diving Safety Officer, and biology graduate student East Carolina University […]
When Dan met Francis at the Ig
Dan Ariely, co-winner of the 2008 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize (for discovering that expensive fake medicine is more effective than inexpensive fake medicine) brought a video camera to the ceremony. Later that evening, he interviewed 2006 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize winner Francis Fesmire (who devised a reliable cure for intractable hiccups: digital rectal massage). Here […]
Hairy programming, on the face of it
Investigator Dennis McClain-Furmanski alerts us to two research projects: In “Computer languages and facial hair — take two,” the author examines the correlation between kind and amount of facial hair, and the survival rate of persons who develop computer programming languages. This is a follow up to a previous article from this author, called “Why […]