Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 9

The New Stage Play About Dr. Moreau

“None Escape — The Island of Doctor Moreau” is a new play by Robin Abrahams, based on the novel by H. G. Wells, directed by Elizabeth Ross. The play premieres Friday, March 14, 2025, at Unity Somerville, 6 William Street, Somerville, Massachusetts, with performances running through Saturday, March 29. TICKETS are now on sale. Robyn Williams, […]

Thoughtful Paradoxes: Zenos’s Paradox & Stupidity

“Thoughtful Paradoxes: Zenos’s Paradox & Stupidity” is a column in the special PARADOXES issue (vol. 31. no. 2) of the magazine (Annals of Improbable Research). you can read that article online, free. If paradoxes — or other improbable research topics! — happily clutter your mind, buy the issue, or even better subscribe to the magazine […]

Stand Up for Science

If you’ve been paying attention to the news the past few weeks, you know that some of the newly installed high government officials in the USA are trying to destroy much of the country’s scientific activity and community. That statement sounds bizarre — and the reality of it is even more bizarre. On Friday, March […]

The Pizza Lifecycle

A doodle by an amused developmental biologist (Keira Lee Rice) — Inspired by “The Evolution of Pizza“, a free PDF from Annals of Improbable Research (Volume 24, Issue 1)

A New Appreciator of Dead Duck Day

An inspired description from a veterinary tech who has just discovered Dead Duck Day: @h717p4r3 Dead duck day is celebrated to commemorate the billions of birds that collide with windows annually worldwide wide and to try to figure out a way to solve this problem. Kees Moeliker is the ornithologist who documented this case and […]

Speaking of Jet Lag and Hamsters and Other Stuff

Diego Golombek, who shared the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize for Aviation, spoke of it toward the end of an interview this week (the lengthy interview was, until that point, about much weightier subjects — the headline is “Science in the eye of the storm: Diego Golombek and the defense of reason in a world of […]

The International Incident of the Herrings and the Submarine

Comedian Chad the Bird gives an entertaining and accurate telling of the once-top-secret international incident of herring farts and submarines that eventually, as a side effect, produced the 2004 Ig Nobel Biology Prize. The story begins at about the 8:43 point in this video (thanks to Sip Siperstein for bringing this to our attention): After […]

Statistics: Mullet Tallying

Statistics can be used to analyze, illuminate, or ridicule any subject, even mullets. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) provides a moderately high-level example, with hairstyles of players in the Australian Football League (AFL). The report bears the headline: The mullet is alive and well in AFL The ABC investigates the numbers behind football’s most […]

mini-AIR and Carmelite Nun winner

The February issue of mini-AIR just went out. It includes the winner of the contest to write a research limerick about this Very (the lead author is named Very) study: “Birth Order, Personality Development, and Vocational Choice of Becoming a Carmelite Nun,” Philip S. Very, Robert B. Goldblatt, and Vincent Monacelli, The Journal of Psychology, […]

Bright Idea: Light Up Tropical Forests at Night?

The brightening idea to light up a tropical forest all night could both solve and create problems, maybe, as suggested in this study: “Exploration of a Novel Geoengineering Solution: Lighting Up Tropical Forests at Night,” Xueyuan Gao, Shunlin Liang, Dongdong Wang, Yan Li, Bin He, and Aolin Jia, Earth System Dynamics, vol. 13, 2022, pp. […]