The chip giant Intel Corporation of Santa Clara. California, has just been granted (June 25, 2019 ) a US patent for a “Magic Wand” with the function of “creating, discovering, and/or resolving spells.” “Methods, apparatuses, systems, and storage media for creating, discovering, and/or resolving spells using a wand are provided. In embodiments, a computing device or […]
Tag: magic
Charming Warts (part 1)
“The process whereby warts, the result of a virus infection, can be affected by psychogenic influences, as occurs in wart charming, is not understood.” A resumé of the state of knowledge as it was in 1956, was presented, in Question and Answer form, in the British Medical Journal, Jul 14, 1956; 2(4984): p.112. [page 2 […]
The Fanciful Number 2.9013, Plus or Minus Nothing
Ig Nobel Prize (psychology, 2012) winner Rolf Zwaan writes, in his blog, about the vaunted — yet uncertain — value of a particular number: The Fanciful Number 2.9013, Plus or Minus Nothing Can we capture any aspect of human psychology in a single number? In 1956 a paper entitled The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two saw the light. […]
Robots make things funnier
Can robots do stand-up? Or, more specifically, can a robot make manzai (Japanese stand-up comedy) seem funnier? Dr. Jonas Sjöbergh, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Knowledge Media Laboratory of Hokkaido University, Japan, has been working on the question since 2008. And, in association with colleague professor Kenji Araki, a paper was produced for LNAI 5447, […]
All-natural magic properties of tin
The May 27, 2010 issue of the journal Nature features two papers about magic aspects of the element tin (symbol Sn): “The magic nature of 132Sn explored through the single-particle states of 133Sn“. The authors explain that “Atomic nuclei have a shell structure that allows for ‘magic numbers‘ of neutrons and protons, analogous to the […]