DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
What do your eyebrows reveal about you? PICTURE: Yan Berthemy/Unsplash
• A technique to identify narcissists by their eyebrows, an attempt to gauge the relationship between income inequality and kissing, and an experiment to determine what happens to an earthworm’s body when vibrated are among those projects honoured at this year’s Ig Nobel prizes. Awarded at a ceremony held last month, the annual awards – presented to those behind research projects which make people “laugh and then think” – also saw prizes awarded to an international team who induced “a female Chinese alligator to bellow in an airtight chamber filled with helium-enriched air” (the Acoustics Prize), a US researcher for “collecting evidence that many entomologists (scientists who study insects) are afraid of spiders, which are not insects” (the Entomology Prize), and the governments of India and Pakistan, “for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other’s doorbells in the middle of the night, and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door” (the Peace Prize). The Medical Education Prize was won by a series of world leaders including President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump, “for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can”.
• A 17-year-old Texan girl has officially been awarded two Guinness World Records thanks to the length of her legs, each of which is almost a metre-and-a-half long. Maci Currin, who is about 2.08 metres (six foot, 10 inches) tall, has claimed the titles for having the world’s longest legs for a female and the longest legs on a teenager. Her legs – which measure 135.267 cm and 134.3 cm – make up some 60 per cent of her total height. “I was never bullied for my legs…I was bullied because I was taller than everyone,” Maci, who lives in Cedar Park, told Guinness, adding that once she stopped caring what other people thought, “I wasn’t affected by anything”. Maci now has a new record in her sights – being the world’s tallest model.
• News that Belgium’s ‘Dinner in the Sky‘ is resuming operations – complete with new social distancing – will be good news for some, but not those with a fear of heights. Launched in 2006 – and since exported to some 60 countries – the experience, known as the ‘flying table’, involves diners being strapped into seats around a big table and then the whole assembly being lifted by a crane some 50 metres into the air. The new arrangements will see diners sitting in groups of four around a series of tables instead of one big table.
