What鈥檚 in a name?
This month, Sam Bankman-Fried returned to the head of the nominative determinism parade of tech entrepreneurs, following his portentous appearance earlier in the year (28 May). Several readers told Feedback how much they admired the exciting rise and even more exciting plummet of Bankman-Fried鈥檚 cryptocurrency organisations, the FTX exchange and the Alameda Research trading firm. Forbes magazine estimates that Bankman-Fried was worth about $17.2 billion a few weeks ago. It now that he isn鈥檛.
Before Bankman-Fried the Worth-Billions became Bankman-Fried the Un-Worth-Billions, another tech entrepreneur lost a far greater amount. Elon Musk was widely hailed as being the world鈥檚 richest person. Then things happened, one of which was that Musk took over Twitter.
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Musk may still be the world鈥檚 richest person. Before Twitter, he was already the boss of four much-touted companies: Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and the Boring Company. (That鈥檚 the case as this column is being written, but we live in volatile times.) A newly published paper called may have little to do with that 鈥� but, metaphorically, it is pungent. The paper includes this passage: 鈥渢he principle underlying the mechanism by which diverse structures of musk compounds generate a common musky odor quality has been a long-standing mystery鈥�. The study includes mention of an organisation called .
This may be a time to mention, again, that this year鈥檚 Ig Nobel economics prize went to three scientists in Sicily for , why success most often goes not to the most talented people, but instead to the luckiest.
Non-Newtonian milk
Research is 鈥渢he mother鈥檚 milk of feeding [and] fueling the economy鈥�, according to .
Politicians who wish to extend that metaphor can now, 25 years later, turn to a study published in the Journal of Biomechanics. The paper explores the physics of how breast milk behaves in its pulsatile flow to an infant. The title is Reader Trevor Lipscombe brought it to Feedback鈥檚 attention.
Metaphor-makers take care, though! The paper warns that its calculations aren鈥檛 the whole story. The scientists did their analysis using only one milk sample. They based their analysis on a simplified 鈥� very simplified 鈥� model of the geometry of the human milk duct system. And 鈥� metaphor-makers be especially aware 鈥� the calculations involved seven parameters, some of which may be a little unfamiliar to politicians, from consistency index to infinite shear viscosity.
The paper offers a stark warning, intended for other scientists who study the fluid dynamics of breast milk. Any politician working up a metaphor about mother鈥檚 milk can regard that message as a cautionary screech: 鈥淔urther investigation is required to quantify non-Newtonian effects.鈥�
Politicians might also learn from an exemplary 1982 study called . It says that 鈥渢he value of mother鈥檚 milk in Indonesia exceeds the gross monetary value of tin and coffee, approaches that of rubber and imported rice, and twice exceeds the annual national budget for health鈥�.
A manly pursuit
Menelaos Apostolou and Chistoforos Christoforou at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus looked at the singularity in some lives. Their new study is called . It advises that 鈥渓ow scorers in mating performance found the identified advantages more important than high scorers鈥�.
In 2020, the pair did a 47-factor analysis of the art of flirting. They devised an inviting title for their study: They extracted information from 808 Greek-speakers, focusing on one goal: 鈥渇or our purposes, flirting refers to covert signals sent between individuals to indicate sexual interest and begin courtship鈥�. The 47 factors range from 鈥済ood looks鈥� to 鈥渋ntense interest in me鈥�. The study concludes that: 鈥淪ex difference [sic] were found for most of the factors.鈥�
Apostolou has widely explored the psyche of men, and the behaviour of women who interact with them. His 2011 paper acknowledges the complexity: 鈥淎 possible criticism of the theoretical framework developed here is that鈥� male parents look for young men as spouses for their daughters, and young men do not have the time to build an impressive collection.鈥� Apostolou finds that objection to be iffy in several ways, one of them eyebrow-raising: 鈥淎s the ethnographic record indicates, it is common for older men to keep adding wives to their family unit who are given to them by other men.鈥�
He also recently produced what may be a singular self-help guide. Its title:
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