The 2016 Ig Nobel Prize for economics was awarded to Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes, and Shelagh Ferguson, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective. They documented their research in the study “The Brand Personality of Rocks: A Critical Evaluation of a Brand Personality Scale,” Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes, and Shelagh […]
Tag: rocks
Assessing the Perceived Personalities of Rocks
Of these three rocks, which would you say is the most ‘confident’ ? How about the most ‘sincere’ or ‘intelligent’? Just such questions were asked in a recent study by Dr. Mark Avis (Massey University, New Zealand), Dr. Sarah Forbes (University of Birmingham, UK) and Dr. Shelagh Ferguson (University of Otago, New Zealand). Their study […]
Boxes for rocks — their own story
Boxes for rocks grow from much thought and careful effort, what with the desire that each box fit snugly and well in enclosing a particular rock. Ann Macmillan, say those who know, “creates cardboard boxes for rocks that are designed to fit each rock’s individual surface. After 3D scanning them and unfolding the rock’s geometry, the […]
Rocks/Tar Rock Star: Ivan Brady
Today’s Rocks/Tar rock star of the day is Ivan Brady, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus and previous Chair of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Oswego, former president of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology and Chair of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, and also former book review editor of the American Anthropologist. Professor […]