Double Standards Days / Non-AI Sheep-counting / Science vs. Judiciary Laws

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Double standards— World Standards Day 2023 will arrive soon, two days after it arrives. As Feedback noted last year (17 September 2022), having double Standards Days is standard behaviour. This year, most of the world will officially celebrate […]

Ig Nobels in my column this week in New Scientist

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine is about the new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The Feedback column was created and edited by John Hoyland. I first knew Feedback (and John’s work) as a subscriber to New Scientist. Every year the column would have an especially fun and interesting writeup of the new Ig […]

Some Ig Nobel acceptance speeches: “The director’s cut”

Several of the 2023 Ig Nobel Prize winners made special extra versions of their acceptance speeches — slightly different from the versions that were part of the 33rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony webcast. Here are those special versions: PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE acceptance speech: PHYSICS PRIZE acceptance speech: EDUCATION PRIZE acceptance speech: LITERATURE PRIZE […]

Posthumous phoning / Gaming with Freud / More trivial superpowers

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: When conversation dies — “Can the dead communicate with cell phones?” asks the headline of a press release from King’s University College, Canada…. The press release explains: “Dr. Imants Barušs, Professor of Psychology, has been awarded a $44,500 […]

Florida, Cradle of Brazilian Butt-Lift Deaths

A tragic interplay of beauty and death led two medical professionals to write this alert for their peers: “Brazilian Butt Lift-Associated Mortality: The South Florida Experience,” Pat Pazmiño [pictured here] and Onelio Garcia, Jr., Aesthetic Surgery Journal, vol. 43, no. 2, February 2023, pp. 162–178. The authors report: Although BBL-related morbidity is generally associated with […]

Special “Gulls, Crows, Pigeons, Woodpeckers” issue of the magazine

The special Gulls, Crows, Pigeons, Woodpeckers issue (volume 29, number 5) of the magazine has flown its way (through the internet, in PDF form) to subscribers. The table of contents and several free articles are online. We heartily encourage you to buy your very own copy of the issue, or even better to subscribe to […]