Yesterday the Annals of Improbable Research recognized the 2019 winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes.
Included in the research receiving awards: pizza as a defense against disease; how wombats produce cubical ‘poo’; the biomagnetic properties of the American cockroach; et alia.
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10 comments
😆 I like these! Some people are quite… strange! 🙄😏
I thought the Wombat poo was one a couple years go? 🤔 Maybe that was something else, or another group. 🤷🏾♂️
Here’s one for you! Seems the usually poor FL Democrats have been getting an increase in donations of late. Over $130k so far.
Republican sheriff throws support behind Democrats in Florida because the GOP ‘has lost its way’
Seems you are mot the only sane (or reasonable?) person in FL!😏
I decided to tweet it if curious. 😉
https://twitter.com/Kryten_42/status/1173845409900269570
ABC was reporting on the Wombat poo research back in December of 2018, but it wouldn’t qualify until this year’s prizes. I looked it up because I also thought it was old research.
The thing is some of the winning research actually has real world uses. The poo research is useful in fluid dynamics and could be applicable in rocket and jet engine research or metal foundry. I remind myself that Post-it notes was an experimental failure at a 3M laboratory that makes a hell of a lot of money for the company.
The thing about Florida is that we have a lot of people who really believe in the Bible, and a lot of Cuban immigrants who made it big in politics. Trump’s lifestyle and attacks on Hispanic immigrants are a problem for two of the major bases of the Florida Republican Party. No politician outside of Northwest Florida wants to annoy either of those groups. There are a lot of new Puerto Ricans who have moved to Florida following the failed response to Hurricane Maria. They are US citizens and are eligible to vote, so Trump has a problem in Florida.
M8, Hipparchia is also a Floridian.
You know my comment about FL was a satirical attempt at humor. I have a couple of Floridians that follow me on Twitter and we chat now & then. You are definitely not alone. 😏
Still… Apologies Hipparchia! And Hi 👋🏾😊
Yes, I remember reading about the research into cubed poop in fluid dynamics. And you’re correct. There have been several discoveries by *accident*. My success in the 80’s and 90’s (as an Engineer) were mostly thanks to “life” lessons I learned from my maternal Grandparents, Mom and Einstein. Among other things, he was a prolific author! And he wrote about everything, not just Physics or Science generally. He had 10 rules that appealed to me and I abided by.
Asimov also had a quote I liked: “The most exciting words a scientist can say is not ‘Eureka’ but ‘that’s odd'” Einstein would have agreed. That was the one that got me excited & thinking whilst doing research or trying to solve an Engineering problem with my team.
I did a search and found this site that quotes his rules properly (and gives an explanation & example. Though, if one needs those, they don’t understand his message anyway IMHO.)🙄🤷🏾♂️
10 Great Life Lessons from Albert Einstein
I added your comment about FL to my tweet with a link back to this thread.
Well… This was just posted on Twitter by a reporter, Brittany Shamus. Her tweet thread is here:
https://twitter.com/britsham/status/1174077639319007232
You know me well enough to know how I feel about this.
I managed to lose my first response, so I’ll give you the short form – I don’t see where private prisons are allowed under the US or state constitutions. It smells like slavery which was outlawed by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. Jails and Prisons are public responsibilities not private profit centers. The concept is just evil, another source of public corruption.
Einstein was a physicist and Azimov was a chemist, but both wrote volumes outside their primary areas of study. They exercised their minds outside their principals fields and retained the elasticity to accept new ideas and concepts when they stumbled across them looking for something else. Intel is always looking for changes, differences, patterns. Cats are great hunters because their vision is primarily tied to seeing changes in their environments. Their color vision and near vision sucks, but they bring down their their prey.
Agree. And true about the kitties. 😀
Speaking of *real* Geniuses (Einstein & Asimov, of course). They have a proven record, and the exact opposite in the WH (the “anti-genius?🤔🤨)… Have a laugh (or just shrug, that’s where I’m at now):
https://twitter.com/Kryten_42/status/1175096639280701441
Masada was much higher and stronger than Trump’s stupid wall, but the Romans managed. With a few ropes we could make climbing the wall a tourist attraction. There are concrete saws, some battery-powered, others with two-cycle engines used by emergency services to extract people from auto accidents and building collapses that would chew than wall up and spit it out. Hell, the Mexicans would cart it off and turn it into wrought iron bird cages to sell to Anglos. Most of the undocumented people in the US enter through ports of entry and overstay visas.
someone called?
“The most exciting words a scientist can say is not ‘Eureka’ but ‘that’s odd’”
and that’s the truth.
and hi, back! kryten!
All storms head to Houston this year.