This month it’s (roughly) the 40th anniversary of the publication of Professor Emeritus Thomas Nagel‘s now-famous philosophical essay entitled : What Is It Like To Be a Bat? ( Philosophical Review, 83, no. 4 ) Since then, a considerable number of other academic writers, researchers and philosophers have paid tribute to professor Nagel’s bat paper […]
Month: October 2014
The Goodness of the Goal of Being Delightfully Lost
Many museums strive to eliminate all potential for confusing the visitors. That goal may sometimes work against the interest of the visitors and the interests of the museum, suggests this report: “Delightfully Lost: A New Kind of Wayfinding at Kew,” Natasha Waterson and Mike Saunders, paper presented at the Museums and the Web conference, April […]
Halloweenish research, back when
Tonight being Halloween, it’s a good time to look back at some research with a Halloweenish flavor. Back in the year 2000 — a year whose approach some people pretended to find scary — we published a two part Halloween Research review: PART !: Werewolves and Vampires, Zombies and Monsters PART 2: Monsters and Ghouls, Screams and […]
Local Management for Sustainable Agronomic Development of ‘Himalayan Viagra’
In the case of so-called “Himalayan Viagra,” farmers in Tebet are devising their own way to protect a suddenly valuable, scare local crop, suggests this study: “Indigenous Management Strategies and Socioeconomic Impacts of Yartsa Gunbu (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) Harvesting in Nubri and Tsum, Nepal,” Geoff Childs, Namgyal Choedup, Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal […]
Assessing the sameness and non-rarity of hipsters
Hipsters are becoming more common, in both major senses of the word common, suggests this study: “The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same,” Jonathan Touboul, arXiv:1410.8001, October 29, 2014. The author explains: “In such different domains as statistical physics and spin glasses, neurosciences, social science, economics and finance, large ensemble of interacting individuals […]
Swaggering in the performance of root canal procedures
Swaggering could be of importance when one has to perform a root canal procedure. This patent shows one way to introduce—and guarantee—that swaggering will be part of the fun: “Swaggering endodontic instruments,” US patent 8454361 granted June 4, 2013 to Michael J. Scianamblo [pictured here]. The patent document explains: “Endodontic instruments are described which have […]
Ig Nobel winner David Dunning surveys recent research about incompetent people
Ig Nobel Prize-winning Cornell psychology professor David Dunning — he of the Dunning-Kruger effect — tells the majestic story of incompetent people, in this essay in Pacific Standard: We Are All Confident Idiots BY DAVID DUNNING • October 27, 2014 • 4:00 AM The trouble with ignorance is that it feels so much like expertise. […]
Pop music: extant and market taxonomized
Pop music – does it really exist? Yes it does. For a statistical analysis, see: Does pop music exist? Hierarchical structure in phonographic markets by Andrzej Buda of the Uniwesytet Jagielloński w Krakowie, Poland, and reproduced in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Volume 391, Issue 21, 1 November 2012, Pages 5153–5159 “I find […]
Dr. Schwab explains why woodpeckers don’t get headaches
Dr. Ivan Schwab explains why woodpeckers don’t get headaches, in this Discovery Channel video: He explains it in more detail, in this TEDx Talk: Dr. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, were awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for ornithology, for exploring […]
A talk about writing about improbable stuff, on Tuesday night
I‘ll be doing a talk about writing about improbable things, on Tuesday, October 28, at the Barker Center (12 Quincy Street, Harvard University), starting at 7:30 pm. It’s free, and open to the public. This event is part of the Harvard Writers at Work series. Despite what the series name implies, I will not sit on a stage and type […]