This week the Ig Nobel Prizes made another appearance on the Jeopardy! TV game show, this time as an answer. It refers to the 2011 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize, which honored the inventor who tried to determine the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Wins for kids — Spectator sports are good for children – good for creating children, that is – according to data in a study by Gwinyai Masukume at University College Dublin, Ireland, and his colleagues…. “With a few […]
An entity called LIttleTingle offers this ASMR-ish video called “Ants carrying Food and Eating Sounds Macro No talking Satisfying and Relaxing”:
Frans de Waal has died. Among his smaller accomplishments was winning an Ig Nobel Prize in 2012, with colleague Jennifer Pokorny, for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends. [The photo you see here shows them giving their acceptance speech at the Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Who eats whom? — Will robots eat us? Or will we eat robots? Both technophiles and -phobes have hungered to learn which will happen first. The answer has now arrived, in a report from a team at […]
The special Ants issue of the magazine (volume 30, number 2) has just gone out to subscribers. It’s got copious details about ants and ants research and ant researchers. And more. Lotsa stuff that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. The magazine is in PDF format. You can buy a copy, or buy a subscription.
“Magpies swoop bald men more often, eight-year-old’s viral survey finds,” says an Australian Broadcasting Corporation report. Some years ago, Australia’s Department for Environment and Water offered this advice: “Magpie swooping season is here! Find out why they swoop and how you can try and avoid them”. And this suggestion: “Carry an open umbrella above your […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Time for love — Valentine’s Day celebrates coupling. Alan McWilliam tells Feedback about an offer he received, before the most recent Valentine’s Day, from a US-based biotechnology company. It couples charm with other qualities. Alan says: “I […]
Birders, heed David Sibley‘s improbable advice about how to identify rare birds: If you think that you, of all people, have found a rare bird, ask yourself the following questions: Is this identification correct? Can you think of even one explanation that works as well or better to explain what you have seen? Do the […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Intentional cattiness — When cats are forced to endure a crush of mass attention from an adoring public, do they continue to behave in their famous, endearing, imperious “cat-like” ways? Simona Cannas and her colleagues at the […]