Humor

Kissing In Amsterdam

“…what happens if a person who prefers to kiss with the head turned to the right attempts to kiss a person who prefers to kiss with the head turned to the left.“? This potentially awkward social situation is the subject of a new scientific analysis from r ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Jul 13 2012 - 10:32am

Is Two A Goup?

Is ‘a pair’ big enough to be called ‘a group’? The tricky subject of dyads has recently been causing considerable professorial debate in the journal ‘ Small Group Research ’. (Note: the word ‘dyad ‘ is derived from the Greek ‘dýo’, meaning ‘two’.) ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Jul 24 2012 - 12:06pm

Dogs And DoggieBots- An Encounter

How might real dogs react to robotic dogs?  The Sony Corporation has been investigating. Researchers at its Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, which “… engages in fundamental research in cutting edge areas of science that are relevant for pushing the st ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Jul 25 2012 - 10:55am

The Great Pyramid- Did It Have An Elevator?

… asks Peter C. Sundt, BSc. in the June 2010) of the journal Elevator World (page 114). Although the article is ‘subscribers only’, an earlier essay by the same author on broadly the same subject (with the same title) is available online here, via The Str ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Aug 1 2012 - 1:39pm

Icicles- Ideal And Otherwise

“A complete theory of icicle shape, including tip growth, self-similarity and the ripple instability, is currently lacking.” Prompting professor Stephen W. Morris and Antony Szu-Han Chen from the Department of Physics, at the University of Toronto, Canada ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Aug 3 2012 - 2:14pm

Mustache Transplants- An Update

It is believed that the first mustache transplants were performed by the late trichological pioneer Dr. Okuda in 1930’s Japan. Since then, considerable progress has been made – some of which is described by Dr. Damkerng Pathomvanich (pictured) of the DHT c ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Aug 6 2012 - 7:35pm

The Linguist Implications Of The Word "Uhm..."

What does “Uh(m)” mean? Professional linguists from a selection of highly respected international academic institutions have pondered the question in some detail over the years, but now a new paper from Emanuel A. Schegloff, Professor Emeritus at the Depar ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Aug 11 2012 - 9:55am

Spotlght On The Nerd Report

The word ‘ Nerd ’ is thought to have originated in the US in the early 1950s – but it took three full decades before a comprehensive academic paper describing ‘Nerdism’ appeared. As the authors of the study explained at the time: “It is not clear why a soc ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Aug 16 2012 - 10:21am

Sailing on the Jurassic Coast

The sailing event of the recent 2012 London Olympics were held at Weymouth, half-way along Dorset and East Devon’s famous Jurassic Coast.  Thinks: Sources: Sailing picture: goc2012.culture.gov.uk; Plesiosaur LHL Digital Collections ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Aug 20 2012 - 6:27am

What hasn’t changed since 1969?

Neil Armstrong changed the way we think of ourselves – but, oddly, not the way we think of the Moon, writes Daniel Hannan on Telegraph Blogs. But what I particularly like is the comment by one Maria Kay: I've toured the USS Hornet, now retired in Ala ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Aug 27 2012 - 4:21am