This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Nest in mouth — Curious items lurk unnoticed in large museums. The photo above shows one of them: a bird’s nest seated in the mouth of a large, ancient, carved stone human face. Feedback recently had the […]
What happens when you tell narcissists that they are intelligent? This study explores that question: “Telling People They Are Intelligent Correlates with the Feeling of Narcissistic Uniqueness: The Influence of IQ Feedback on Temporary State Narcissism,” Marcin Zajenkowski [pictured here] and Gilles E. Gignac, Intelligence, vol. 89, November–December 2021, 101595. (Thanks to Abel Dean for […]
The special ANTS & AUNTS (volume 30, number 3, May/June 2024) issue of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research has just gone out to subscribers. Even if you are not a subscriber you can read several of its articles online free.
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Money reunited — Chung To Kong found a way, in the spirit of unboiling an egg (Feedback, 10 September 2022), to make banknotes from shredded banknote pieces…. The big bite — Highly educated humans are trying to […]
Cuteness can be powerful on a national level and also internationally, according to this study: “Soft Power: ʻCute Culture’, A Persuasive Strategy in Japanese Advertising,” Oana-Maria Bîrlea, TRAMES, A Journal Of The Humanities And Social Sciences, 2023, pp. 311–324. The author [pictured here] explains: “The article addresses the ways in which soft power is used […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Blood spatter on high — “Be prepared!” This enduring motto of the Scout movement will come to mind for many readers of a paper called “Bloodstain pattern dynamics in microgravity: Observations of a pilot study in the […]
“I once performed an autopsy on a deceased pedestrian who had been wearing 23 layers of clothing. It took us longer to undress him than to perform the autopsy.” —from the book Risking Life for Death, by Ryan Blumenthal (Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 2023). Here is a brief video of the author describing a different […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Boxing: thinking outside — From time to time, the sport of boxing changes its rules. But for the most part, it still requires that each participant in a match be both human and alive. (Exceptions do occasionally […]
Robert Gaskins, co-inventor or PowerPoint, highlights Doug Zongker‘s “Chicken Chicken Chicken” as one of his favorite ever PowerPoint presentations. This a videorecording of Doug Zongker’s talk in the Improbable Research session at the February 2008 AAAS meeting, in San Francisco:
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Chasing the tale — Silvia Leonetti and colleagues in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, the US and Denmark don’t quite explain why dogs wag their tails, but they do explain that it is hard to explain. In a paper […]