Humor

Prof. Jean-Claude Bradley, a true open science pioneer, has passed away. Many people worked with him, he was willing to challenge the status quo and that means a lot of people wanted to be around him - he was one of the earliest scientists to sign up to help Science 2.0 after this first component launched. I don't know how he heard of us, he was just in tune with the broad science community that way. Everything is numerical here - it makes it possible for people to change their profile names, their column names, article titles, etc. without breaking links. JC's official user number was 62 -…

A Quantum of Political Entanglement If you like your science laced with humour, or your politics laced with (almost) science, then you will enjoy reading this scientific analysis of a politician. Friction, magnetism, relativity, quantum mechanics - all are covered in “The physics of Nigel Farage”. Even the URL is worth a read - http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/may/07/physics-nigel-farage-. image source - The Independent

The Hairy Ball Theorem  (HBT) was first postulated (and then proved) by Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer in 1912. An informal statement of the theorem is that :               “One cannot comb the hair on a coconut”. Temptations to classify the theorem as trivial should be strongly resisted – as it’s still finding relevance in many current research areas. Take, for example, the domain of Quantum Field Theory – the quote above coming from a recent research article in which it features, a paper by Dr. Cihan Saçlioğlu (…

It finally happened. One of the purple striped socks my daughter Lana had given me as a birthday present in Winnipeg a few years ago vanished at some stage while I was doing laundry in Los Angeles, after we gave a lecture at UCLA. As our itinerant life style (Gordon, 2011) results in frequent changes in laundromats (presently in Osoyoos, British Columbia), there is no going back. My wife, Natalie, ordinarily a scientist with the rationality and humor of a StarTrek® Vulcan, nevertheless advised that I should keep the remaining sock of the pair because adding an odd sock to a wash reduces…

GWPF Hires Lord Monckton As I.T. Consultant Lord Lawson, founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation is to pay Viscount Monckton an undisclosed retainer for I.T. consultancy services following a failure of the GWPF's server to post valid scientific information on multiple occasions. Monckton's computing skills are a matter of record among climate modelling professionals.  Lord Monckton denies* that he once hacked into the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System to cite Prince Charles for over a thousand unpaid parking tickets.   A reliable source has obtained an excerpt from…

One of the first technical papers to reference ‘Graunching’ was ‘Railway Noise: Curve Squeal, Roughness Growth, Friction and Wear’ (Report: RRUK/ A, 2003, D.J. Thompson, A.D. Monk-Steel, C.J.C. Jones. P.D Allen, S.S. Hsu, and S.D. Iwnicki) “Other related forms of curving noise include ‘graunching’ at switches and crossings (possibly due to flange rubbing), [and] ‘juddering’ thought to be caused by unstable dynamic behaviour of the vehicle…” The subject surfaced again in ‘Noise emissions of transit trains at curvature due to track lubrication’ (Indian Journal of Pure&Applied Physics,…

The question : ‘Why do some*(see note below) birds bob their heads when walking?’ has perplexed scientists for many years. Some researchers suggest that head-bobbing may be correlated with the morphology of the retina, but others propose that it’s mechanically linked to the locomotor system, and that its visual functions are secondarily adapted.Either way, one of the most comprehensive studies of head bobbing was authored in 2010 by Jennifer Hancock, a doctoral student at the Biknevicius Lab of Ohio University, US, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy…

Please observe the following unusual locomotive behavior which begins at around 55 seconds into this video – when Groucho Marx starts to run. Groucho is displaying a behaviour which scientists now call ‘Groucho Running’ *see note. But Groucho was by no means the first to develop this unusual gait. Take, for example the Tinamou. It also performs Groucho Running, and presumably has done so for many thousands of years. The trait has not remained under-investigated. A team from Ohio University, US, encouraged Tinamous to run on a treadmill whilst they were they were being filmed with a high…

Amazing as it may seem, algorithmic methods for generating music go back at least as far as 1757 (see: Musikalisches Würfelspiel). But algorithmic methods for generating US ‘Country Music’ are far more recent. Indeed, Jim Suruda and professor Norman Carver of the Department of Computer Science, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale IL, USA, are still in the process of refining the development of an Artificial-Intelligence-based software application called the ‘Automated Country Music Engine’ (ACME). The software not only  : • Generates melodies• Adds chord accompaniment• Writes…

To begin, an example of failed humor.  Two friends in their 20s (called ‘L’ who is female, and ‘R’ who is male) are conversing : L: “What did the big cup say to the little cup?”R: (sarcastically) “I’m bigger than you?”L: “No, Nothing. Cups can’t talk”. R: (completely ignoring L) “I can hold more water than you?” As is evident, this is a poignant example of failed humor. And although humor in general has come in for great deal of consideration in academia – even having its own peer-reviewed journal since 1988, Humor, the International Journal of Humor Research), nevertheless a branch…