Posts by Alice Shirrell Kaswell:

The donut robot

Here is my Belshaw Donut Robot 42. My robot came configured to make 384 donuts per hour automatically. I bought it on eBay for $900, which I thought was a good deal as this particular Donut Robot normally sells for a few hundred dollars more. It was difficult to find information about the Belshaw Donut […]

Cole’s nailed jelly

Given some jelly mixed according to standard procedures and a vertical wall, it is not possible to nail the former to the latter and have it stay there for any significant amount of time. Furthermore, these experiments were conducted by nailing the jelly to a horizontal surface which was then gradually tilted. Nailing jelly to […]

Meaty vertical integration

Vertical Integration is a business concept: combining processes, factories, or even entire companies that together constitute different stages of the manufacturing/marketing/sales process for a particular industry. Season Shot, Inc., a perhaps apocryphal company in Bloomington, Minnesota, combines some industrial elements that, traditionally, were separate. Their industry: hunting and cooking. As they explain: Season Shot is […]

Kanzi and the marshmallow treats

Investigator Stephen Black writes: From the November 2006 issue of Smithsonian Magazine in which the psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh describes the abilities of one of her language-learning bonobos, Kanzi: “Once, Savage-Rumbaugh says, on an outing in a forest by the Georgia State University laboratory where he was raised, Kanzi touched the symbols for ‘marshmallow’ and ‘fire.’ […]

Gravity and a spy

It is primarily designed to be read by scientists involved in the search for gravitational radiation who are curious about the outsider who spends so much time spying on them. I try to explain who I am and what I am doing. So says Harry Collins about his pet project. (Daniel Davies and others have […]

Beauty Tips for Ministers

PeaceBang’s Beauty Tips for Ministers is the name of a blog. The blog is all about beauty tips for ministers. Here is one of them: While we’re on the subject of clean cutting, fellas, I’m seeing FOOD IN BEARDS at collegial gatherings. I am seeing UNTRIMMED GOATEES. I am seeing SIDES OF ‘STACHES THAT DRIP […]

Research into research into research

Research into research can be improved That’s the headline on a November 17, 2006 press release issued by the Karolinska Institute. The press release goes on to say: The methods used to evaluate the quality of research can be far more accurate and far-reaching, according to a new doctoral thesis on bibliometrics from Karolinska Institutet […]