Liechtenstein still up for rent

News travels slowly, sometimes. In 2003 the Ig Nobel Prize in economics was awarded jointly to Karl Schwärzler and the nation of Liechtenstein, for making it possible to rent the entire country for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings. Today, April 16, 2011, The Guardian (and other news organizations), aided by a press […]

Blowing the feathers off a chicken

In a 1975 monograph called Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed, Bernard Vonnegut considers what might happen to a dead chicken if it were fired from a cannon. He explains: “One way of estimating the wind in a tornado vortex is to determine by experiment what air speed is required to blow all […]