At last, a mathematics monograph for people who like tall buildings, glass balls, windows, and long titles: “The Maximal number of floors a Building can have where you can tell the highest floor from where you can throw a glass ball without breaking it, if you have b glass balls and are allowed t throws“, […]
Tag: balls
Ball squeezing for enhanced creativity (update)
Some say that squeezing balls can enhance one’s creativity. [for background see: from 2010, Improbable article : ‘Ball squeezing and creativity’] Questions can arise however – such as ‘what kind of balls might work best’ and ‘under what circumstances’? Answers may depend on the kind of creative task in hand, as is postulated in a […]
Male-Body-Part-Metaphors-driven Organizational Change
If, from a critical and/or strategic management perspective, you’ve examined the metaphorical resources provided by specific parts of the male body for thinking [about] masculinity in social and organizational contexts, then, like many others, you may well have concentrated on the phallus. Now, a new paper in the journal Human Relations (March 5, 2015) points […]
The Testicular Fortitude of Urbexers
Following our recent Improbable article on the male bias in military bunker enthusiasts, may we recommend a follow-up paper by Carrie Mott at the Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, and Susan M. Roberts University of Kentucky; Department of Geography, and University of Turku, Finland; which examines (amongst much more) the ‘testicular fortitude’ of ‘urbexers’. “Urbex […]
Behold the Non-Squeezing Property Of Contact Balls
The field of mathematics often supplies papers that demand attention even from casual observers. Here’s a new one: “Non-Squeezing Property Of Contact Balls,” Sheng-Fu Chiu, arXiv 1405.1178v1, May 6, 2014. The author is at Northwestern University. Here’s detail from the study: BONUS (unrelated): “IMPROVEMENT IN MACHINES FOR SQUEEZING PUDDLERS BALLS,” US Patent #190,385, granted to E. […]
Ball squeezing – Kick Butt™
Ethnomusicologist Dr. Verna Gillis (previously an assistant professor at Brooklyn College and Carnegie Mellon University, US), has just recently been granted a US design patent for her ‘Ball’. (Jan. 7th, 2014) More accurately named as the Kick Butt Ball™, which is described as “… a novel spin on a stress ball, with one side shaped […]
Hairy Ball Update 2012
The Hairy Ball Theorem (HBT) was first postulated (and then proved) by Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer in 1912. An informal statement of the theorem is that : “One cannot comb the hair on a coconut”. Temptations to classify the theorem as trivial should be strongly resisted – as it’s still finding relevance in many current research […]
Ball squeezing and creativity
Want to be more creative? No problem, just take a ball and squeeze it (but only in your left hand, otherwise the consequences are as yet unknown). Dr. Abraham Goldstein (pictured – and who may or may not be squeezing a ball with his left hand) along with colleagues at the Brain Research Center of […]