We’ve all heard about nefarious corporations employing linkfarms (or cyber-robots) to artificially bump-up their Facebook ‘likes’ – or nogoodnik book publishers who pay fake reviewers to positively puff up their online book reviews – but surely the earnest and scholarly world of academic journal publishing is above that sort of thing? Maybe think again. A […]
Cat dropping, for curiosity’s sake
The Skull in the Stars blog writes about the practice, back when, of cat turning: One thing I’ve learn from studying the history of science is that scientists are human beings. Often incredibly weird, weird human beings. For example: in the mid-to-late-1800s, an exciting era in which the foundations of electromagnetic theory were set and […]
Ig Nobel ceremony tickets go on sale TODAY, July 9, at NOON
Tickets for the 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will go on sale on TODAY —THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2015— at NOON (Boston time). They will be available exclusively from the Harvard Box Office (www.boxoffice.harvard.edu) (online, by phone, and at Holyoke Center). (If you want us to notify you by email, about future events, add yourself to the […]
Podcast #19: How to pour the perfect 2nd cup of coffee
Perfect cups of coffee, glug-glugging bottles, food in your mouth, and drinking fish turn up in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. Click on the “Venetian blinds” icon — at the lower right corner here — to select whichever week’s episode you want to hear: SUBSCRIBE on Play.it or iTunes, to get a new episode every week, free. [NEWS: Soon, the podcast will also be […]