It was 20 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to— No. That’s not what happened. What happened 20 years ago today is that a duck died, in spectacular fashion, and a scientist noticed how it happened, and took notes and photos to commemorate the discovery. Today, Friday June 5th, 2015 is the 20th […]
Tag: Beatles
A ninefold typology of Beatles please-please analysts
The Bibliolore blog reports: In an experiment, three groups of music students transcribed the first 64 seconds of The Beatles’ Please please me. Analysis of these transcriptions yielded a ninefold typology of polylinear listeners: holistic melodists, holistic formalists, impressionists, melodic conventionalists, semiprofessional generalists, nonmelodic semiprofessional generalists, nonprofessional melodic generalists, semiprofessional rhythmicians, and holistic graphicians. This according […]
Who was the Walrus? As the case may be.
The question ‘Who was the Walrus?’ has been discussed in some detail ever since 1967, when John Lennon famously declared (in song form) “I am the Walrus” *see note below. The legal implications of whether he was (or was not) the Walrus have received less attention though, prompting attorney Ezra D. Landes to write a […]
Swordswallower recapitulates gorilla
Swordswallower Dan Meyer, co-winner of the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine (for the BMJ study “Swordwallowing and Its Side Effects“) accidentally replicated the findings of an earlier Ig Nobel Prize-winning study that involved a gorilla. This video shows it happening: The video was filmed during the 2010 Ig Nobel Tour of the UK (for […]