Jerry Leath Mills [pictured here] reigns as the unchallenged authority on the subject of dead mules in 20th-century American southern literature. Professor Mills established his reputation – almost instantly – in 1996, with the publication of a long essay called “Equine Gothic: The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature of the Twentieth Century”. […]
Category: Extra-Improbable columns
Our columns in other publications — The ‘Feedback’ column in New Scientist magazine, beginning in September 2022, and the “Improbable Research”column that ran for 13 years in The Guardian newspaper.
The ergonomics of wok-flipping
The Effect of Wok Size and Handle Angle on the Maximum Acceptable Weights of Wok Flipping by Male Cooks, a report in the journal Industrial Health, does more than its title reveals. It also shows how to standardise an intricate physical test. Many professional wok-users use a big one. Almost all of those woks have […]
‘And his hair turned white overnight’ – or did it?
In a study called Sudden Whitening Of The Hair: An Historical Fiction?Anne-Marie Skellett, George Millington and Nick Levell, at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, try to chop off a myth at its roots. People’s hair, they believe, does not all of a sudden turn white. It just doesn’t. Goodbye, ye hoary tales of Queen Marie Antoinette […]
A Comprehensive Look at Dandruff in Pakistan’s Army
Public knowledge about dandruff in Pakistan‘s army comes mainly from a study called Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Regarding Dandruff Among Soldiers, written by Naeem Raza, Amer Ejaz and Muhammad Khurram Ahmed, published in 2007 in the Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Pakistan. Raza, Ejaz and Ahmed surveyed 800 male soldiers of all ranks, ascertaining […]