Some say that the German Army General (retired), Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin, was a man “who made the improbable probable.” For an example of this viewpoint, see the website of Zeppelin University (based on the shores of Lake Constance, Germany) “Graf Zeppelin was a manager at the end of the 19th century […]
Tag: fire
Fire in the river (Cleveland), fire from on high (London)
The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire, in 1969. Randy Newman wrote a song about that. This week, in London, UK, things in a neighborhood in London are burning, the heat being supplied by a new, tall building that—for lengthy periods of the day during at least part of the year— focuses sunlight down […]
Cat fighting, now and then
Fighting words about the Internet’s favorite subject, cats: 1. The project to eliminate cats from New Zealand (described in Slate) 2. The 16th-century German cat bomb (described in The Atlantic), and which is shown in this painting along with a bird bomb:
Fire Eating and Good Health
A new medical report demonstrates how to tell a story: “Severe Pneumonitis After Fire Eating,” Daniel Franzen [pictured here], Malcolm Kohler, BMJ Case Reports 2012;10.1136/bcr-2012-006528. The authors, at University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland, begin their report with eight words that, by themselves, provide a wealth of information: “A 38-year-old, previously healthy fire eater…”
A look at the Wasabi fire alarm (Chemistry Prize)
Here’s a BBC News report about the wasabi fire alarm, whose inventors received the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry. The photo below (by Alexey Eliseev / Improbable Research) shows Makoto Imai (center) and one of his co-inventors (several others also attended the ceremony) at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, receiving their Ig Nobel Prize from Nobel laureate Roy […]
Danger: The lightning bolt that was a fridge
A lightning bold hurled by an angry god is not necessarily a lightning bolt, and may be a gift from a way-cool machine. One can infer this from an urgent warning issued by the London Fire Brigade: [05 July 2011.] A week after a tower block caught fire in what was widely believed to be a […]