Startling
Discovery of the Day…
Er,
Night
by FWR
Late night visitor! Arachnophobes look away
now!
It has been pointed out that there is something
missing in this photo…
Quote of
the Day
Pittsburgh Scanner: Southside
Slopes. Fernleaf St. Caller reporting a guy in the area throwing cymbals from a
drum set at people.
Saying
Silly Things with Maths Dept.
by DG
Wikipedia says this of Belle Vernon,
Pennsylvania:
As of the 2000 census, there were 1,211 people,
612 households, and 288 families residing in the borough. The population
density was 4,647.4 inhabitants per square mile (1,794.4/km2).
But there were only...
...never mind. It's mathematics. I wouldn't
understand.
Good
Advice for Researchers
from the Library of Congress
Tavaron,
Bug Rescuer (Video)
by Tavaron
This unfortunate Blue Hawker dragonfly fell
into the pool. Fortunately Tavaron was there to rescue it and take its picture.
We call that Glück im Unglück.
Ig Nobel
Prize Report
by DG
The 2026
Ignobel Prizes were awarded on 3 September in Zürich, Switzerland, and
broadcast live on Youtube.
The
prizes, awarded annually since 1991 by the Annals of Improbable Research, honour research that is far from
bogus, but often has a humorous aspect. After all, they awarded the 2000 Prize
in Psychology to David Dunning and Justin Kruger. In 2023, Dr. David Dunning
won the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) Scientific Impact
Award. The Dunning/Kruger Effect is now a household term, which means that many
people who have not read the paper now talk about the concept with an air of
expertise that exactly illustrates the researchers' main point, which was that
people who are unskilled in an area tend to grossly overestimate their own
abilities due to lacking 'the metacognitive ability to realize it.'*
The aim
of the Ig Nobel Prizes is 'to make you laugh, and then to make you think.'
Among the live entertainment this year was a repeat performance of The Dunning-Kruger Song.
As
usual, the prize-giving was both enlightening and hilarious. The costumes
amazing. The paper-airplane-throwing a sight to behold, though not particularly
accurate. A good time was had.
Next
year, they plan to broadcast from Antwerp.
*Kruger,
J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in
recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134.
TTFN, Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor
FWR - I had the same skinny version of the house spider, last week. Being an arachnophobe, I tend to freak out when they appear and saw a video of a woman in Australia, with a monstrous hunter spider on the wall behind her. I counted 18 in our house in Ayrshire one autumn (close to a cornfield).
ReplyDeleteDunning Kruger? Me too!
ReplyDelete