Why don’t ice skaters get swollen hands? An hypothesis

If you were to take part in a prolonged inline roller-skate street journey involving the rhythmic swaying and waving of your outstretched arms in a circular arc, you might end up suffering from oedema (a.k.a. edema). As did Doctor Sody Naimer [pictured] of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Neve Dekalim, Goosh Katif, and Ben-Gurion University […]

Conceivabilism, inconceivabilism and someone with 200 arms and legs

Sometimes, philosophers like to construct highly exaggerated imaginary scenarios in order to test the validity of theories – conjuring up, for example, human bodies with a pair of spare eyes in their shoulders. Since there’s  no  very little limit on how exaggerated such propositions might be, some take on outlandish proportions. Such ideas can push […]

The Creation of the World’s First Peanut Butter and Jellyfish

An experiment done partly in jest produces intriguing data: “The Creation of the World’s First Peanut Butter and Jellyfish,” P. Zelda Montoya and Barrett L. Christie, Drum and Croaker, vol. 45, January 2014, pp. 14-18. The authors, at the The Dallas Zoo and Children’s Aquarium at Fair Park, report: “The use of novel feed items […]

Septipus?

Whither a seven-armed octopus? Wonder whether it’s a case of wither? So does the author of this study: “An Octopus With Only Seven Arms: Anatomical Details,” Ian G. Gleadall, Journal of Molluscan Studies, Volume 55, Issue 4. 1989, pp. 479-487.  The author, at School of Medicine Tohoku University Seiryo cho Sendai, Japan, reports: “A male […]

A many-armed-god sort of robot

There are many ways to describe what happens in this video. Karaman and Frazzoli and friends, the scientists and engineers behind it, choose one of the less poetical ways: “The RRT* algorithm is used together with the Ball Trees algorithm and a memoization technique for asymptotically-optimal path planning in high-dimensional configuration spaces for manipulation purposes.” They also […]