The CIA invites the public to read these two documents: ELEGANT WRITING IN THE CLANDESINE SERVICES ELEGANT WRITING-REPORT NUMBER TWO Both documents purport to be written by Richard T. Puderbaugh. Puderbaugh collects and savors boneheaded writing by spies. The CIA web site calls this kind of writing “tortured prose“. Here’s a passage fromPuderbaugh’s first report: the […]
Year: 2014
“Beware The Man of One Study”
The Slate Star Codex blog has a curious essay called “Beware The Man of One Study“. Here’s how it begins: Aquinas famously said: beware the man of one book. I would add: beware the man of one study. For example, take medical research. Suppose a certain drug is weakly effective against a certain disease. After […]
Fat Cats Disambiguation (tubby tabbies, or….?)
To (very loosely) paraphrase Murphy’s law : “If there’s a chance that something might be misunderstood, someone will come along and misunderstand it.” That’s exactly what happened when Improbable came across a 2010 paper in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, entitled : ‘Novel dietary strategies can improve the outcome of weight loss programmes […]
Corbin Covault joins Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS)
Corbin Covault has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). He says: I, Corbin Covault, am an experimental physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I study the highest energy cosmic rays arriving to Earth from outer space, and wonder where they come from. I categorically deny all rumors that I can speak fluent Klingon. Corbin Covault, LFHCfS [Click on the image. […]
Not Its Crowning Glory: Regulating Anti-Hair-Loss Products
Some years ago, a law student looked at US government attempts to regulate products that claimed to prevent hair from vanishing. The student — who retained his own head of hair and later became a law professor — wrote this paper: “Not Its Crowning Glory: Obstacles for FDA in Regulating Ingested Dietary Supplements Purporting to […]
A super, super slo-mo video look at the snapping of a spaghetti strand
Destin, the star of the SmarterEveryDay video series, takes a very, very slow motion look at the spaghetti-breaking oddity that led to an Ig Nobel Prize in physics: The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when you bend […]
A 1912 Olympic shooting mystery math/physics quiz
This week’s math/physics essay quiz is to explain the math and physics underlying these “INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE OFFICIALS AND COMPETITORS AT THE SHOOTING COMPETITIONS” from THE OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES OF STOCKHOLM 1912, ISSUED BY THE SWEDISH OLYMPIC COMMITTEE. Here is the relevant passage: In addition to the rules and regulations already issued, […]
Join us, improbably, at the Vienna Science Ball on January 31
An invitation to you — yes, you! — from Vienna, Austria: Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, For the first time, the City of Vienna is staging the Vienna Science Ball. On Saturday, 31 January 2015, Vienna’s City Hall will be turned into a festive venue for the city’s science and research community. In a city renown […]
The year 2014 in hair (Luxuriant Flowing Hair Clubs for Scientists — LFHCfS)
The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists has a new member gallery with details on all the new members inducted during the year 2014. The 2014 Membership Gallery covers all 3 of the (conjoined triplet) hair clubs: The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, The Luxuriant Former Hair Club for Scientists, and the Luxuriant Facial Hair Club […]
‘Dog Stories’ (their value for journalists)
How can professional journalists draw public attention to important news stories? A team of investigators from the University of California and the University of Miami have a word of advice. And the word is ‘Dogs’. Their findings are published in PS: Political Science & Politics, (Volume 47, Issue 04, October 2014, pp 819-823) under the […]