Recent Progress in ‘Monty Python’ studies

Monty Python has not, repeat not, been ignored by academia. Here are links to but a few of the scholarly studies which look at, examine, discuss, evaluate, appraise, assess, analyse and otherwise probe the Monty Python oeuvre, and its wider, and narrower, implications, entailments, illations, connotations, inferences, and ramifications. ● Monty Python and the Mathnavi: […]

‘Silly Walk’ studies (#2)

The Movement Lab at Ohio State University, US, is not the only academic institution to have experimentally evaluated ‘Silly Walks’ (see Part 1 of this series). On the other side of the Atlantic at the Department of Motion Science, University of Muenster, Germany, researchers Sook-Yee Chong, Heiko Wagner and Arne Wul have also performed a study. […]

Contemplating death — not so bad after all

Some might jump to the conclusion that ruminating about death and destruction is a major downer – with potentially deleterious consequences for individuals and society at large. But a joint US/Dutch research team have published findings which shine a positive beam of light into this potentially murky area. With the sombre implications of Terror Management […]

Joking about accountants – a netnographical approach

Unfairly or not, some have characterised the rôle of accountants in popular culture as dull and boring. And the bottom line is that there is a plentiful stock of jokes about them. But a provisional audit of the scholarly literature reveals that researchers been extremely economical in accruing an inventory of accountancy-humour papers. In fact, […]

Improbable TV: “The Tay Bridge Disaster” in Ukrainian

Here’s a new episode — #McG-002, “”The Tay Bridge Disaster” with Dr. Elena Bodnar — of the Improbable Research TV series. It’s the 2nd of many episodes featuring the bad poetry of William Topaz McGonagall. William Topaz McGonagall, who died in 1902, is widely regarded as the worst poet ever to write in the English language. The […]