Research and other stuff that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
On Friday, September 29, we will be doing TWO (2) shows of Improbable Dramatic Readings as part of the Cambridge Science Festival, organized by the MIT Museum. What Luminaries (of various wattage) will each do brief dramatic readings from seemingly absurd, genuine research studies and patents. Some of those studies and patents have won Ig […]
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 Nobel Prize winner Jim Knowlton, who won his prize in 1992 for creating the educational poster “Penises of the Animal Kingdom”, figures in a report today by John Kelly in the Washington Post: A real double take: Readers share their cases of mistaken identity … In the early 1990s, Brian Knowlton’s father, James Knowlton, was a professor […]
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 […]
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 […]
The 2023 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded to ten winners tonight. The winners and their achievements are listed on the Ig Nobel Prize winners page. Additional detail is on the 33rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize web page. Here is video of the entire ceremony: You might enjoy also dipping into the press reports about […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Time for a nap — Brainy people get to dream a little more than not-quite-so-brainy people, correlationally speaking, if their brains and genomes accord with the findings of researchers from the University of the Republic in Uruguay, University […]