In the United States, and in some other countries, no doctor wants to be called “a quack“. (An entire web site called Quackwatch devotes itself to reporting on doctors who are, in the view of Quackwatch, quacks.) Doctors who fear being called “a quack” can but envy No Kwak, MD. Everyone can happily agree that […]
Category: Improbable Investigators
People who do research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
The Hercules Number: How a Dimensionless Physical Parameter Got Its Name
I did not conceive or give birth to the Hercules Number. But I did name it. Here’s the story. In science and mathematics, we often get to name things. To help with exposition, sometimes we essentially have to name them, because it can help us do a better job of explaining things. In fact, we also enjoy […]
Quantifying the Smell of Urban Areas
Data analysis has led to numerous insights into a diverse variety of complex systems. A new paper that gives a whiff of such insights is The Emotional and Chromatic Layers of Urban Smells by Daniele Quercia of Bell Labs, Luca Maria Aiello of Yahoo Labs, and Rossano Schifanella of University of Turin. Quercia et al. write the […]
The senator whose method is: Make people LAUGH, NOT THINK
U.S. Senator Jeff Flake has appropriated and dismembered our basic goal and method, which is to make people LAUGH, and then THINK. The senator lopped off the “think” part, to produce his own basic goal and method: to make people Laugh, and NOT think. You can see this on display in Senator Flake’s recent colorful press release and booklet, which ridicules scientific research. We […]