Philosophical disagreements on possible reason(s) ‘Why Flatulence is Funny’ – Professor Sellmaier v. Professor Spiegel

If you want a reliable method of raising a laugh, you can always resort to references of flatulence – a comedic ploy that goes back (at least) 2000 years. But the question as to why it’s considered funny, remains, to this day, a hotly debated subject. In 2013, Professor James Spiegel of the Philosophy Department at […]

Acoustical Analysis of Shouting Into the Wind

The physics of shouting into the wind are now slightly better plumbed. Details emerge in the study “Effects of flow gradients on directional radiation of human voice,” Ville Pulkki [pictured here, performing the experiment], Timo Lähivaara, and Ilkka Huhtakallio, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 143, no. 2, 2018, pp. 1173-1181. (Thanks to […]

Noseflutes for Christmas anyone?

Stuck for ideas for Christmas presents? Thought about noseflutes? Before purchasing (or making your own, as above), you can find all the information you require for an informed decision at Noseflute.org – since 2011, the definitive online resource for all things noseflute-related. A review of the ‘Nasalette’ replica, as featured in the video above, can […]

How does one measure the wind speed inside a tornado?

How does one measure the wind speed inside a tornado? Bernie Vonnegut looked back at an early state-of-the-art method, and wrote a report called “Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed” [published in “Weatherwise,” October 1975, p. 217]. Vonnegut told the world why that early method, which involved a chicken carcass and a cannon, may have […]

Effect of Wind on Stock Market Returns

“Effect of Wind on Stock Market Returns: Evidence from European Markets,” Hui-Chu Shu and Mao-Wei Hung, Applied Financial Economics, vol. 19, no. 11, 2009, pp. 893–904, DOI 0.1080/09603100802243766. (Thanks to Kajbaje Sudhanshu for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at National Taiwan University, report [AIR 16:1]: This study investigated the relationship between wind speed […]