HEADLINE (Vancouver Sun, November 19, 2013); “Vancouver’s ban on the humble doorknob likely to be a trendsetter” HEADLINE: (Washington Post, September 10, 2014): “A single doorknob can contaminate up to 60 percent of people in a building in 4 hours” But, but…
Year: 2014
Sortable database of Ig Nobel Prize Winners
There’s now an elegant, sortable database of Ig Nobel Prize Winners. It’s made in Silk – a platform for visualizing and sharing data. Silk says that it is: …a way to search through and filter all the Ig Nobel prizes and find strange correlations (but not necessarily causations) such as: “prize winners that contain the words ‘beer’ […]
Doorknobs (not just elevator buttons) going viral. Oh, my!
Almost immediately after the fearful news about elevator buttons, and with the world worried about the Ebola virus, the American Society for Microbiology has issued a press release decrying the dangers of doorknobs. As I wrote here recently, three doctors in Toronto wrote a little study about the bacteria they found on hospital elevator buttons. That study might foster a renewed yearning […]
The bad news sandwich
To set the scene, an Improbable joke. Doctor : “Ah, Mr. Smith, we have some good news and some bad news, which do you want first?” Mr. Smith : “Gimme the bad news doc.” Doctor : “We amputated the wrong foot.” Mr. Smith : “Agggggh ! – And the good news?” Doctor: “The other one’s […]