“I learned the hard way that there’s no bear spray that will stop a bear.” So says Troy Hurtubise in this old video (below) where he demonstrates some of his advanced technology. Today comes word that a man named David Brown was awarded a 2011 Invention Award for his crime-fighting armored glove. At a glance, […]
Month: May 2011
How he reads a table of numbers
Peter Freed, feeling provoked, muses about how he reads a science paper (and in this passage, how he reads a table in a science paper): Now listen: most non-scientists see a table like this and freak out. They take around 3 seconds to decide they can’t understand it, get scared of feeling stupid in the face […]
Robust goodness from random promotions
There’s new, corroborating research that organizations become more efficient when they promote people randomly. The University of Catania team that won the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize in management for the original, mathematical work, has published a new study: “Efficient Promotion Strategies in Hierarchical Organizations,” Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, Cesare Garofalo, arXiv:1102.2837v2. “the efficiency of an […]
The molecatchers’ perspective
The British Traditional Molecatchers Register offers this as its official perspective on modern molecatching in Britain: With the withdrawal of Strychnine for mole control the demand for the Traditional Molecatcher has risen and will rise in the future. Many of the pest control companies are abandoning mole control work because trapping is too time consuming […]