Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 12

Science Friday day-after-Thanksgiving Ig Nobel Prize highlights broadcast

Please join us on Friday, November 29, 2024, for this year’s Science Friday day-after-Thanksgiving Ig Nobel Prize highlights broadcast. To many people, the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony — each year honoring ten things that make people LAUGH then THINK — is an annual radio event, surprising stuff and people that pour out of the radio […]

The Ritually Concealed Shoe, and so on, in mini-AIR

Two limericks about this research study — “Revealing the Ritually Concealed: Custodians, Conservators, and the Concealed Shoe” [by Ceri Houlbrook and Rebecca Shawcross, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018] grace the November 2024 issue of mini-AIR, our free monthly little e-newsletter of stuff that’s too tiny to […]

Psycho-Forensic Mystery: The Man Who Licks Floors

“An uncontrollable licker is rampant in the capital’s shops. The police say they have received several calls mentioning a man who, once he entered a store, began licking the floor. The increase in calls from shopkeepers to the police has caused the 17 telephone line to become clogged, reports Le Parisien .” So reported La Dépêche, […]

How Winning an Ig Nobel Prize Affected Their Careers

“How a silly science prize changed my career” is the headline on an article in Nature magazine. Catriona Clarke interviewed some past winners of the Ig Nobel Prize. The article begins: Eleanor Maguire wasn’t too thrilled when she was first offered an Ig Nobel Prize. The neuroscientist at University College London was being honoured for […]

The special IG NOBEL PRIZE issue of the magazine

This year’s special IG NOBEL issue (volume 30, number 6, November/December 2024) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research has just gone out to subscribers. It’s stuffed with stuff about the new Ig Nobel Prize winners, the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, the new mini-opera that premiered as part of the ceremony, and much […]

Coffee and the Wellbeing of Mice

Humanity’s persistent wondering about how and whether drinking coffee might affect the wellbeing of mice led to this new study done in Portugal: “Impact of Coffee Intake on Measures of Wellbeing in Mice,” Nuno J. Machado, Ana Paula Ardais, Ana Nunes, Eszter C. Szabó, Vasco Silveirinha,Henrique B. Silva, Manuella P. Kaster, and Rodrigo A. Cunha, […]

Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (video part 1 of 3)

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor things so surprising that they make people LAUGH, then THINK. At the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, ten new prizes were awarded. Two days later, most of the winners gathered, at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to ask each other questions. This was the 2024 Ig Nobel Face-to-Face event. […]

Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (part 1 of 3)

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor things so surprising that they make people LAUGH, then THINK. At the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, ten new prizes were awarded. Two days later, most of the winners gathered, at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to ask each other questions. This was the 2024 Ig Nobel Face-to-Face event. […]

Explaining a strange idea: The Oreo Cookies Diet

The key to explaining a strange idea, someone somewhere may once have said, is to talk really, really fast. Here is a new example. An explanation is given, in video form, at two speeds. A lengthy text explanation is published in the medical study “Oreo Cookie Treatment Lowers LDL Cholesterol More Than High-Intensity Statin therapy […]

About the Predicament of Earthworms

Earthworms are getting some loving, concerned attention as to their imminent aqua predicament. The University of Leeds made this announcement: Researchers are to investigate whether the humble earthworm is being threatened by climate change and flooding here in the UK. Scientists from the University of Leeds, the University of York and the University of Liverpool will spend the next […]