“First popularized within Halo 2 multiplayer competitive matches, teabagging is a controversial practice where the player’s avatar repeatedly crouches over a defeated player’s ‘body’ in order to simulate rubbing his or her genitals over the avatar’s body” [our hyperlink] By way of a recent essay for the academic journal Games and Culture, the first (and […]
Month: December 2018
Whithering commentary about misconduct
Whither, oh why, do some researchers misconduct themselves professionally, and what is to be done about it? This study wants you to wonder about that: “Whither research integrity? Plagiarism, self-plagiarism and coercive citation in an age of research assessment,” Ben R. Martin, Research Policy, Volume 42, Issue 5, June 2013, Pages 1005-1014. The author laments: “This extended editorial asks […]
When were World Standards Day 2018?
This year, 2018, World Standards Day was celebrated on October 14. In Canada, World Standards Day was celebrated on October 4. In the USA, World Standards Day was celebrated on October 18. This staggered celebration is pretty much standard practice, and has been for many years. People were moved to create a video celebration of […]
Sad news: Roy Glauber, paper airplane sweeper and physicist of light, is gone
We have just heard the sad news that Roy Glauber died. Roy was our friend, and for more than 20 years he was a sweepingly charismatic part of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony—he was “The Keeper of the Broom,” who almost every year would sweep paper airplanes from the stage during the Ig Nobel ceremony, […]
The scourge of ‘Alphabetism’ (new paper from professor Zax)
Professor Zax, who is (amongst other things) an anthroponomastician at the Department of Economics, University of Colorado at Boulder, US, presents (along with co-author Alexander Cauley) a new 48 page working paper which suggests that (males) who have a surname initial which occurs towards the end of the alphabet are more likely to end up […]
The Utility Fog of J. Storm Hall
Utility fog has a father, who wrote a report: “Utility Fog: A Universal Physical Substance,” J. Storm Hall, Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace, NASA Conference publication 10129, 1993, pp. 115-126. Hall, at Rutgers University, explains: Active, polymorphic material (“Utility Fog”) can be designed as a conglomeration of 100-micron robotic cells (‘foglets’). […]
A look back at the smile training machine
This German news report, from about 2009, looks at the Omron Smile Scan training machine, developed in Japan: The manufacturer issued, in 2007, a press release heralding their then-new smile recognition technology.
The “Santa Claus Effect” – positive or negative? (two viewpoints)
Here’s the abstract of a 2017 study by Professor Brendan Kelly, Consultant Psychiatrist at Tallaght Hospital, School of Medicine, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Background: Christmas “is the season to be jolly” but, despite many recent studies of happiness and wellbeing, the population distribution of jollity is unknown. Aims: To assess levels of jollity across Europe, […]
A look back at TV coverage of the herring-centric Ig Nobel visit to Sweden
Vetensakapens Värld produced a loving TV look, back in 2012, at the Ig Nobel show at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, Sweden. That event included the first public discussion of the Soviet-submarine-and-farting-herring incident, the heart of which had until then been classified top secret by Swedish government. Despite the secrecy, an Ig Nobel Prize had […]
Playboy (the German edition) interviews Ig Nobel Prize winner Kees Moeliker, discoverer of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck
Playboy (the German edition) interviews Ig Nobel Prize winner Kees Moeliker, discoverer of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck: