Humor

Humming (everything You Ever Wanted To Know About It)

Here is a (partial) overview of (some of) the recent academic literature on the subject of 'Humming' Security Humming-based human verification and identification “The experimental results show that linear prediction cepstral coefficients and per ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 1 2013 - 2:58pm

Math- The Travelling Salesperson Problem- Solved By Pigeons (?)

In the award-winning children’s book ‘ Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus ’ by Mo Willems, (Hyperion Books for Children, 2003) a persistent pigeon ‘asks, pleads, cajoles, wheedles, connives, negotiates, demands and uses emotional blackmail in attempts to g ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 7 2013 - 10:50am

Q-Tips: The Danger

“Cotton buds are commonly used to clean the ears, remove wax, in case of itching in the ear, aural toilet in discharging ears and some time as a habit.” – explain Suresh Kumar and  Shamim Ahmed  of the Department of ENT, at Liaquat University of Health Sc ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 15 2013 - 1:08pm

Peculiar Scottish Mountaineering Disorder

'A peculiar Scottish disorder' is described in the Scottish Medical Journal (SMJ), August 2011 vol. 56 no. 3, pp. 164-166 (by Doctor I. B. McIntosh.)  “A highly contagious behavioural affliction is now endemic in highland areas of Scotland. Pret ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 21 2013 - 11:17am

The Prevalence Of Bees In American Musical Recordings

For the first time, a peer-reviewed comprehensive discography of US-based apical musical recordings has been assembled. (Think: bees, hives, honey, buzzing, stingers, &etc). Professor William Lewis Schurk (Sound Recordings Archivist of the Music Librar ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 31 2013 - 9:58am

Tortoises- Which Way Do They Prefer To Roll?

If one were to overturn a tortoise, would it be more likely to right itself (i.e. get back on its feet) to the right or to the left? To find out, a joint research team from the Comparative Psychology Research Group, University of Padova, Italy and the B.R ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Nov 5 2013 - 8:47am

Square Eggs- A Review Of Progress

Through millions of years of evolution, the shape of an egg has evolved to an optimum – at least from a hen’s point of view. For some humans though, this shape is less than ideal –  there are those who prefer instead the aesthetic appeal of a cuboid rathe ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Nov 21 2013 - 10:55am

Linguistics Paper Written In Guyanese Creole- Possibly The Only One (corrected Title)

Hubert Devonish, who is Professor of Linguistics at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica, is one of the very, very few researchers to have published a scholarly paper written entirely in  Guyanese Creole. An example paragraph: ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Dec 4 2013 - 9:35am

‘Stray Sock Syndrome’- A Robotic Investigation

The ubiquitous ‘Stray Sock Syndrome’ can be a considerable headache for human sock-owners and sock-sorters. But help is afoot courtesy of the Computer Science Division at the University of California at Berkeley, US, and the Max Planck Institut Informatik ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Dec 5 2013 - 12:25pm

'The Slimeball' (Maritime Weapon)

Shaving foam and baby diapers might not be the first key components to spring to mind if you were tasked with developing a gargantuan Non Lethal Weapon (NLW) for use against enemy warships. But spring they did, however, to the mind of Lieutenant Commander ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Dec 11 2013 - 8:13am