Who invented the spork? That’s disputed. Who invented the International Order of St Hubertus? Count von Sporck. So they say.
‘Animal deterrent and training device and method thereof’ (new patent)
Trouble with cats on your counters, table tops, furniture, curtains, floor areas – or maybe “hanging out at your entry door”? Inventor Shawn Tait of Issaquah, WA, US, noted that “they just don’t like being squirted or misted with simple inexpensive water” and has just received a 2016 US patent for his ‘Animal deterrent and […]
Social dilemmas from the not-so-distant past [Podcast 52]
An index of awkward social dilemmas dominates this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams —with dramatic readings by Robin Abrahams — tells about: Awkward Social Dilemmas — Etiquette, by Emily Post, 1922. The mysterious John Schedler or the shadowy Bruce Petschek perhaps did the sound engineering this week. The Improbable […]
Rejoice? Run? Hide? The Dawn of Experimental Econophysics
Everything can be explained, to some degree, by marrying economics to physics. This book does that: Experimental Econophysics: Properties and Mechanisms of Laboratory Markets, by Ji-Ping Huang [pictured here], Springer, 2014, ISBN 978-3-662-44234-0. The author explains: “Experimental Econophysics describes the method of controlled human experiments, which is developed by physicists to study problems in economics […]