This invention made it convenient both to swagger and to measure with exactitude: “Military interval swagger stick,” US 2923063, granted February 2, 1960 to Lorenzo D. Hansen. The patent document explains: “The use of swagger sticks is a military custom. They are carried by officers during drills and parades. Other than its limited value as […]
Tag: measure
Measures must be taken, maybe. But what do they mean?
Hadas Shema muses on the importance, or lack of importance, of certain new measurements — measurements of the supposed “impact” of a published study. She writes, in Scientific American‘s Information Culture blog: When in trouble or in doubt, invent new words. We have bibliometrics and scientometrics from the Age of Print. Now they are joined […]
“Trojan.. hard evidence.. phallometric device”
“Trojan concluded that the only way to obtain hard evidence was to administer a test using a phallometric device.” So reports Jan Puhl in Spiegel Online about a curious story. The article begins: Controversy Surrounds Czech Use of Erection-Measurement Machine Authorities in the Czech Republic have been using a supposed erotic lie detector to test […]