Historic video: An hour of improbable research, presented at the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] in 2014—with Marc Abrahams [founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony] and Theo Gray [2002 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize winner for inventing the 4-legged periodic table table.] Here’s the official NIST description of this event: Dung beetles finding […]
Tag: standards
“Japanese toilet industry agrees to standardize complex bidet controls”
User interface issues are not glamorous — but they do matter. Many irksome problems linger for years or decades. Sam Byford reports, in The Verge, on a cleansing case: Japanese toilet industry agrees to standardize complex bidet controls The Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association, a consortium of companies producing plumbing products including Toto, Panasonic, and […]
When are World Standards Day in 2016?
This year, 2016, World Standards Day was on Friday, October 14. One of the competing official announcements says: Each year on 14 October, the members of the IEC, ISO and ITU celebrate World Standards Day, which is a means of paying tribute to the collaborative efforts of the thousands of experts worldwide who develop the […]
Shit and the Need for Data-Driven Standards
Feces, faeces, ordure, dung, manure, excreta, stool, stool-NOT-faeces, and stool-NOT-feces are the prime examples in a newly published study that examines the need for data-driven standards. The study is: “Laying a Community-Based Foundation for Data-Driven Semantic Standards in Environmental Health Sciences,” Carolyn J. Mattingly, Rebecca Boyles, Cindy P. Lawler, Astrid C. Haugen, Allen Dearry, and Melissa Haendel, Environmental […]
Virginity: a lack of standards
Be aware that there is no ISO standard for this: “A New Bride Presented Her Dad With a “Virginity Certificate” At Her Wedding” — October 22, 2015 report, in Mic BONUS: In 2015, as in previous years, there is also no universally adhered-to standard for the date of World Standards Day.
(Video of) A measure of improbability at NIST
Here’s video of the colloquium talk I did a few days ago at NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in Gaithersburg Maryland. The official description: “A Measure of Improbable Research — haphazardly selected samples of Ig Nobel Prize-winning and other research that makes people LAUGH then THINK”. The talk was broadcast live to NIST facilities in […]
Non-Uniform Day versus World Standards Day
Today’s cogno-intellectual exercise: Compare and contrast Non-Uniform Day with World Standards Day
Odes to British Tea
Today, two odes to British Tea. First, the British Standards Organization’s official six-page standard for how to brew a cup of tea. It was honored with the 1999 Ig Nobel Prize in Literature. Second, Professor Elemental’s music video “Cup of Brown Joy”:
Confessions of a recovering engineer
Charles Mahron’s “Confessions of a recovering engineer“, in Grist magazine, is itself a well-engineered essay. (Thanks to investigator Ethel Saylor for bringing this to our attention.)
A Solid Approach to Old Dung
Coprolites, which are not manufactured to meet to meet any regulated industry standard, can be examined in a standard way: “A Standardized Method for the Description and the Study of Coprolites,” F. Jouy-Avantin, A. Debenath, A.-M. Moigne, and H. Mone, Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 30, no 3, March 2003, pp. 367-72. (Thanks to Tom […]