“Magpies swoop bald men more often, eight-year-old’s viral survey finds,” says an Australian Broadcasting Corporation report. Some years ago, Australia’s Department for Environment and Water offered this advice: “Magpie swooping season is here! Find out why they swoop and how you can try and avoid them”. And this suggestion: “Carry an open umbrella above your […]
Caterpillar, a big company that manufactures big construction machines (and lots of other stuff), released this intentionally peculiar safety video in 1980:
In Ig Nobel Prize-winning invention is now being used, insistently, to help protect nuclear power plants. The 1993 Ig Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to James Campbell and Gaines Campbell of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, dedicated deliverers of fragrance, for inventing scent strips [also known as “scratch ‘n sniff” strips], the odious method by which perfume […]
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? […]
Today’s historical industrial safety poster is from Russia, part of a collection amassed by an admirer of this distinctive form of art:
The question of print books versus e-books is a matter of life and death, if Bill Crozier’s theory is correct. In 2006, Mr. Crozier proposed that schoolchildren be equipped with thick books, to use as shields if and when their school is attacked by terrorists. Mr. Crozier proposed this theory during his campaign to become Superintendent of Education for […]
W.C. Fields developed a method to deal with bad drivers. He filmed this dramatization of it (presented here in two parts): UPDATE: Those videos have been removed from YouTube. We do not know why. Here’s a description of what you would have seen. This is from an essay by Roger Fristoe, on the Turner Classic […]
Safety signs are one area in which, according to this study, East Germany ultimately triumphed over West Germany: “Should I Stay or Should I Go – Cognitive Conflict in Multi-Attribute Signals Probed with East and West German ‘Ampelmännchen’ Traffic Signs,” Claudia Peschke, Bettina Olk [pictured here], Claus C. Hilgetag, PLoS ONE 8(5), May 24, 2013, […]
If you are or should be or ever might be in a situation where you might worry or should worry about the transmission of disease via a CPR manikin, this report is for you: “Guidelines for the prevention of disease transmission in the use of CPR manikin,” Committee to Advise The American Red Cross, National […]
How can you protect yourself against a tornado? Two different medical groups suggest that you might try putting a safety helmet on your head, because that might be better than not putting a safety helmet on your head, maybe. Early this year came the treatise: “Safety Helmets: A Practical, Inexpensive Solution for Reducing the Risk […]