Ig Nobel Prize winner Kees Moeliker’s TED talk is now online. The people at TED chose to debut it on April 1: Kees was awarded the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for biology, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. [REFERENCE: “The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas […]
Burns, Burns, Burns, and Burns on Fires
Burns can tell you a lot about fires. Some examples: “Use of Copper Powder Extinguishers on Lithium Fires,” by R. Burns, et al., 1994 “The application of CFD to the modelling of fires in complex geometries,” A.D. Burns, et al, 1992 “Hotel Fires Safety Tips,” A.C. Burns, 1981 “Building fire protection system and method for […]
Dr. Fish, Dr. Watts and their cetacean tubercules
“Major discoveries always come with a story: Newton had his apple, Archimedes had his bath tub, and Dr. Frank E. Fish, while shopping for a gift, examined a sculpture of a humpback whale in a shop and issued a fatefully inaccurate observation: ‘Look at that. The sculptor put the bumps on the wrong side of the flipper.’ […]
Advice: To chew or not to chew
It is not an absolute, inviolable rule that one should always chew one’s food. Whether or not this Time report is accurate, its advice at the end is basic and good: A fishmonger in southern China found a live bomb inside one of his squid. The man — identified only as Mr. Huang by the Guangzhou Daily — said that while […]