President Lukashenko builds on his Ig Nobel legacy

Charter 97 reports today (October 7, 2013) that 2013 Ig Nobel Peace Prize winner Alexander Lukashenko is continuing his Ig Nobel Prize-winning ways: Schoolchildren prohibited from clapping during end-of-harvest festival in Zhlobin Schoolchildren had been prohibited from clapping during a parade held in Zhlobin on Friday afternoon within the framework of an annual national end-of-harvest […]

Belarus takes steps against discrimination

The nation of Belarus has taken big very public, perhaps symbolic gestures against discrimination. In Belarus, one infers, all persons are considered equally capable of performing important tasks. The Christian Science Monitor reports: In Belarus, one-armed man arrested for clapping The crackdown in Belarus grew more indiscriminate this week. Among the 400 arrested: a one-armed […]

Finnish clap research

“Hand claps are a relatively primitive conveyor of sonic information, yet they are widely applied for different purposes.” Primitive though they may be, given just a simple audio recording of a single handclap, is it possible to determine the hand-configuration of the clapper via a computer-assisted digital analysis of the sound? Researchers Antti Jylhä and […]