Two limericks about this research study - “Revealing the Ritually Concealed: Custodians, Conservators, and the Concealed Shoe” [by Ceri Houlbrook and Rebecca Shawcross, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018] grace the November 2024 issue of mini-AIR, our free monthly little e-newsletter of stuff that’s too ( Read more... )

Please join us on Friday, November 29, 2024, for this year’s Science Friday day-after-Thanksgiving Ig Nobel Prize highlights broadcast. To many people, the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony - each year honoring ten things that make people LAUGH then THINK - is an annual radio event, surprising stuff and people that pour out of the radio […]

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“An uncontrollable licker is rampant in the capital’s shops. The police say they have received several calls mentioning a man who, once he entered a store, began licking the floor. The increase in calls from shopkeepers to the police has caused the 17 telephone line to become clogged, reports Le Parisien .” So reported La Dépêche, […]

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“How a silly science prize changed my career” is the headline on an article in Nature magazine. Catriona Clarke interviewed some past winners of the Ig Nobel Prize. The article begins: Eleanor Maguire wasn’t too thrilled when she was first offered an Ig Nobel Prize. The neuroscientist at University College London was being honoured for […]

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This year’s special IG NOBEL issue (volume 30, number 6, November/December 2024) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research has just gone out to subscribers. It’s stuffed with stuff about the new Ig Nobel Prize winners, the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, the new mini-opera that premiered as part of the ceremony, and much […]

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Humanity’s persistent wondering about how and whether drinking coffee might affect the wellbeing of mice led to this new study done in Portugal: “Impact of Coffee Intake on Measures of Wellbeing in Mice,” Nuno J. Machado, Ana Paula Ardais, Ana Nunes, Eszter C. Szabó, Vasco Silveirinha,Henrique B. Silva, Manuella P. Kaster, and Rodrigo A. Cunha, […]
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