Mystery abounds, in little ways, in the industries that supply chemicals. Derek Lowe, writing in Chemical World, opens the curtain on some of those mysteries: So the world of chemical supply is far from straightforward, and it can be affected in unpredictable ways. The last two years have illustrated some of these… The complications become […]
Alyssa Pelish writes about the difficult cases handled by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Pelish’s essay, called “The Bureau of Hards“, appears in the Fence blog. Close attention is paid there to a modest experiment: Indeed, an experiment run in 2000 by a group affiliated with the eccentrics behind the annual Ig Nobel Prize found that […]
Tom Gill alerted us to this study, saying “I’ve been a geology nerd for fifty-plus years. I was today years old when I learned that a type of rocks exists which is officially named… rauks.” The study is: “Limestone Sea Stacks (Rauks) Record Past Sea Levels and Rocky Coast Evolution in the Baltic Sea (Gotland […]
The Ig Nobel Prizes have again turned up in a crossword puzzle, this time as an answer in the August 2, 2022 puzzle in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. The clue for one of the down words is: 23 ___ Satiric Science Prize for “research that makes people laugh then think” By our […]