This advice about cats, from an artificial duck farmer — a farmer who raised ducks under artificial conditions — was published in 1906, in the book Natural and Artificial Duck Culture by James Rankin: Do Not Have Neighbors Too Near. Another source of discomfort was our neighbors’ cats. Now, we are eminently social in our […]
Wave-Riding Ducklings: 2022 Ig Informal Lecture
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, […]
Handy Key Words
Many published research studies include list of “key words” — words that should or might help people (and help search engines) discover that the study exists. This new study includes an unusual word in its list of key words: “Endogenous opioid release following orgasm in man: A combined PET-fMRI study,” Patrick Jern, Jinglu Chen, Jouni […]
‘Polarized World’ — Tombstones, Dragonflies, and Light
Here’s a teaser video for the film “Polarized World’: And some background info about it, from ELTE [Eötvös Loránd University, in Budapest]: TRICKED INSECTS – AND WHAT WE CAN DO FOR THEM In 2016, ELTE researchers received the prestigious Ig Nobel prize for physics for the funniest research of the year . The award-winning publication of Gábor Horváth and György Kriska asked […]




