According to a new survey by Prince & Assoc., more than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances. Still, only 12% of the multimillionaire cheaters said they plan to give up on their lovers altogether for financial reasons. “Rich people are getting hit, and they’re all […]
Month: November 2008
Is Obama the Antichrist?
Is Obama the Antichrist? asks a November 15, 2008 headline in Newsweek magazine. The answer, of course, is almost certainly no. Mikhail Gorbachev is the Antichrist—something we know thanks to Robert Faid, author of the book “Gorbachev! Has the Real Antichrist Come?“, in which Mr. Faid calculates the exact odds (710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1) that Gorbachev […]
Corpse case arises anew
The three men who inspired John Troyer’s study “Abuse of a Corpse: A Brief History and Re-Theorisation of Necrophilia Laws in the USA” (discussed here earlier this year) are again in the news. The Associated Press reports on November 20, 2008: 3 men plead not guilty to digging up grave to have sex with dead […]
Dishing up dormice delight
The edible dormouse is the star of Giuseppe Carpaneto and Mauro Cristaldi‘s 1995 study Dormice and Man: A Review of Past and Present Relations, published in the journal Hystrix. The two Rome-based scholars, Carpaneto at Terza University, Cristaldi at the University of Rome, savour one of the tasty rodent’s two major historical roles. Though some […]
Saturday: 15 minutes of duckiness in Vienna
This Saturday in Vienna, Austria, Kees (“The Duck Guy”) Moeliker will will elaborate on ‘Science communication with a laugh: Improbable Research and the Ig Nobel Prizes’. In no more than fifteen minutes, he will tell how and why he won the 2003 Ig Nobel biology prize, highlight the (new) 2008 Ig Nobel prize winners and […]
Improbable Research Collection #111
Here’s episode 111 (“Inertia Debates”) of the Improbable Research TV series. To see it, click on the image at right, and you will be whisked to YouTube (where you can subscribe, if you like, to the Improbable Research channel). These are three-minute videos about research that makes people laugh, then makes them think. For links […]
“Significantly Greater” Marburger, science satirist
A giant tip of the hat today to John Marburger. Mr. Marburger is generally known as the “science advisor to President Bush and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy“—but most American scientists believe that his efforts have been focused on something other than what those jobs require. That something, we are now […]
Tidman and the Masquerades
Dr. Michael J. Tidman of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh NHS Trust asks questions that have never been asked, at least so overtly and with such precise language. He aims to unmask poseurs of a particular type: dermatological ailments that present in such a way that a person might presume them to be something other […]
Sounds from, if not like, teeth
The auditory capacities of teeth may be demonstrated through a simple test. First, find a quiet room to sit in. If you are wearing an analog watch, remove it from your wrist. Open your mouth wide and suspend the timepiece inside your mouth without actually touching your teeth. You will hear a quiet ticking. But […]
Random visitors — an observation
I apparently do sit at my desk just waiting for random people to stop by and ask me to do random things, and then insult me when I refuse. So writes the self-described Female Science Professor, after giving an example of the phenomenon.