A headline in the Paris newspaper Le Monde declares that I am the Pope. The Pope of Improbable Science. You can see this pope on display on September 12, 2019, in the 29th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. If you are in Paris (or anywhere else), you can watch the webcast. If you are […]
Tag: pope
A new pope, a new look at sacerdotal celibacy
The Catholic Church recently gave itself a new pope. On the question of priests engaging in sexual reproduction, history is repeating itself. The last time around, we wrote (in 2005), in The Guardian: Whenever there is a new pope, the air fills with questions about priestly celibacy. The more formal term for this practice is […]
Involuntary Hippophagia (5): Papal Bull Taboo Origin?
Those concerned about Involuntary Hippophagia (the unintended ingestion of a horse, or part thereof ) may be wondering just how far back the UK’s distaste for eating horses, unintentionally or not, might go. Improbable can reveal that the puzzle has certainly been on the table for more than a century. ‘Rockingham’ (writing in the Boston […]