Dismal news: Last year we published a link to a Call for Abstracts about “Economics of the Undead”. Tomorrow the resulting book, Economics of the Undead: Zombies, Vampires, and the Dismal Science, will be published. The authors, who are themselves in a technical sense undead, also birthed a web site.
Cooking up a weapon: Kangri for the angry
Warfare breeds ingenuity of a sort: “Use of Kangri (A Traditional Firepot) as a Weapon,” Arsalaan F. Rashid, Rifat Fazili, and Akash D. Aggarwal, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 2014. (Thanks to investigator Ivan Oransky for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences Medical College and Govt. Medical College, […]
They have revoked the patent for the wheel
I have begun blogging about Improbable Innovation (a very broad category, that!) for the Boston Globe‘s BetaBoston.com web site. My first report there begins: Re-inventing the wheel: Why not? Many do. Despite the warning “Don’t re-invent the wheel”, people continue to reinvent the wheel. Some of those people file patent applications. Patent offices even approve […]
Malpositioned breast implant correction innovation
Unfortunately, breast implants are sometimes positioned wrongly. A new method to correct such problems – using shoelaces – is described by Dr. Daniel C. Mills II, MD, FACS: of the Aesthetic Plastic Surgical Institute, Laguna Beach, California, in the latest edition of Aesthetic Surgery Journal : ¨Implant malposition after breast augmentation surgery remains a common […]