“The Smell of Tornadoes,” Howard G. Altschule and Bernard Vonnegut, Weatherwise, vol. 50, no. 2, 1997, pp. 24–5. Vonnegut, older brother of and inspiration to the novelist Kurt Vonnegut, was awarded the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize in meteorology for his 1975 report, “Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed.” This 1997 paper says [AIR […]
About: Stephen Drew
Posts by Stephen Drew:
More Inappropriate Highlighting
“Harmful Effects of Preexisting Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension and Metacognitive Accuracy,” Vicki Silvers Gier, David S. Kreiner and Amelia Natz-Gonzalez, Journal of General Psychology, vol. 136, no. 3, 2009, pp. 287–300. Silvers Gier and Kreiner were awarded the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in literature for their 1997 report “The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting […]
Scientists Now Know: Intimacy
“Associations of Sex and Type of Relationship on Intimacy,” D. Salas and K.E. Ketzenberger, Psychological Reports, vol. 94, no. 3, part 2, June 2004, pp. 1322–4. The authors, who are at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, in Odessa, report that [AIR 16:1]: “Both men and women reported significantly higher mean scores on […]
Upside-Down Reliability (device)
U.S. patent #4565370 was granted on January 21, 1986 to Tony Christianson for a “foot holding device for hanging upside down.” Mr. Christianson’s patent makes pointed reference to earlier, roughly similar inventions—especially to one by R.M. Martin, who was granted U.S. patent number 3,380,447 on April 30, 1968 for an “ankle device for supporting an […]