The higher one stands skeletally, the higher one is likely to rise in rank, if one is officially part of Dutch policing, suggests this study: “Effect of Self-reported Height on Occupational Rank Among Police Officers: Especially for Women it Pays to be Tall,” Abraham P. Buunk, (pictured here), Gert Stulp, and Wilmar B. Schaufeli, Evolutionary […]
Tag: height
Referee Height Influences Decision Making in British Football Leagues
Do referees who are short punish players more than referees who are not so short do? A new study by Ig Nobel Prize winner Minna Lyons and colleagues probes that question. The study is: “Referee Height Influences Decision Making in British Football Leagues,” Dane McCarrick, Gayle Brewer, Minna Lyons, Thomas V. Pollet, and Nick Neave, […]
Cat dropping, for curiosity’s sake
The Skull in the Stars blog writes about the practice, back when, of cat turning: One thing I’ve learn from studying the history of science is that scientists are human beings. Often incredibly weird, weird human beings. For example: in the mid-to-late-1800s, an exciting era in which the foundations of electromagnetic theory were set and […]
High-level food for fad-diet theorists
Persons who make their living by creating, naming, and giving advice about fad diets can find food for their professed thoughts about food in this new study: “Lower Obesity Rate during Residence at High Altitude among a Military Population with Frequent Migration: A Quasi Experimental Model for Investigating Spatial Causation,” Jameson D. Voss, David B. […]
Jumping Off a Building With Bubble Wrap
Rhett Allain, writing in Wired, took a calculating approach to bubble wrap. He introduced it with these thoughts: How much bubble wrap do you need to survive jumping out of the 6th floor of a building? Let me randomly say this is a height of 20 meters. Where would you start with a question like this? […]
Cooking: The drop of the steak, the sizzle of the analysis
XKCD tries to answer the question “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?” This graph is a small part of the analysis: This is an example of both temporarily-haute cuisine and temporarily-fast food. BONUS (barely related): Another example of drop-cooking, compared […]
Sunset calibration, for people in skyscrapers
Muslims who live in skyscrapers must calibrate the sunset according to what floor they live on, according to a mufti, according to a report in The National: Fatwa means late iftar on top Burj Khalifa floors … In a fatwa released over the weekend, the Grand Mufti of Dubai called upon Muslims living in skyscrapers, particularly […]