The National Museum of Scotland includes in its vast collection this item, number T.2012.28: Description Fire alarm for waking deaf people by nasal irritation with synthesized wasabi, awarded 2011 Ig Nobel prize in chemistry, designed by Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami, Japan, 2012 Inventor Makoto Imai himself […]
Tag: Edinburgh
“Improbable After Dark” tonight in Edinburgh
It’s Edinburgh tonight for the 2012 Ig Nobel Tour of the UK. This will be a special “Improbable After Dark” show, at Counting House, 36 West Nicolson Street. Expect an all-star cast of scientists, journalists, and entertainers each doing exceedingly-brief readings from genuine, improbable scientific studies. If you are easily offended by anything, do not come to this […]
Bad Poems Today in Edinburgh, at 2 pm
Join us today for a historic revelation. at the Edinburgh Science Festival. Our three-part event begins at 2:00 pm. Newly Discovered Poems by William Topaz McGonagall. This special event begins with a revelation of utterly no importance, but great historical interest: the first modern recital of two more nearly-lost poems by the bad poet William […]
Overlooked McGonagall poems found!
There’s news about the bad poet William Topaz McGonagall. It’s of absolutely no importance, but of great and goofy enjoyment to many in the English-speaking world. Several poems that have never been published in any book will soon be recited in public [on March 19, at our show at the University of Dundee] for the […]
From satire to proposal in 120 years
Ptak Science Books found an apparently serious engineering proposal that echoes a satire done more than 100 years earlier: John B. Prather launched an idea in 1945 for building a high-speed pneumatic passenger/freight train connecting New York City to Philadelphia. [It’s described in his] New York-Philadelphia Vacuum Tunnel, Preliminary Design Features and Economic Analysis… One […]