Improbable’s Call for Papers on “The nutritional value of comets” Mini-Annals of Improbable Research, Issue Number 1994-02, June, 1994, is still open. For inspiration with your submissions, what better time is there to prepare a Lovejoy Comet (Cock)Tail? Here is the recipe – inspired by chemical components that are all readily available on Comet Lovejoy […]
Tag: sugar
Cyanide moths – ok snack for kids
Some types of moth, notably the Zygaena genus, can contain significant quantities of cyanide, raising the question ‘Is it a good idea to eat them?’ The question has particular relevance since the moths are a traditional favourite snack amongst children from the Carnia region of Italy. The children like to eat the moths´ingluvies (roughly equivalent […]
How volcanologists define “spatter”
Golden syrup might not be the first material to spring to mind if you were after an experimental analogue with which to investigate the effects of ‘spatter’ around typical Hawaiian basaltic volcano eruptions. But spring it did to the mind of researchers Sumner, Blake, Matela, and Wolff, as recorded in a 2005 paper for the […]
A cheerfully depressing investigation: “Which Placebo to Cure Depression?”
This study pokes a pointed stick into lots of questions about medicine, science, and scholarship. The lead author writes (in a note to us) that “It addresses a paradox in modern medicine: antidepressants are often considered to be mere placebos [1] despite the fact that meta-analyses are able to rank them [2]: it follows that it […]