What is Citizenship? [Long reads]

In a lead essay in Cato-Unbound, Pascal Emmanuel Gobry made the case for compulsory military service. The response essays were scathing in their opposition – read Jason Kuznicki, Zach Maurin & Jacob Hornberger. In a follow-up essay, Gobry uses the analogy of a member of a family to explain the relationship that a citizen has to the state.

The Octobass – a 12 foot bass [Video]

The 12-foot tall Octobass plays so low, it’s lowest string when played fully open is barely in the human hearing registry. To play it, a musician must stand on a stool and use leavers to fret the notes. It resides at the new Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, and is the only one in North America. Watch

Authentic John Cleese article? Not so, but hilarious nonetheless [Article]

Discovered this satire piece, wrongly attributed to John Cleese.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be alright, Mate.” Two more escalation levels remain: “Crikey! I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!” and “The barbie is cancelled.” So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.

On attending an Ig Nobel ceremony & after-party [Article]

Scientific research that makes people laugh, then think finds its way into the annals of the Improbable Research, eventually competing for the Ig Nobel awards each year. Carmen Nobel visited this year and writes about it:

The requisite small-talk name-dropping bests that of most cocktail parties. Overheard conversation snippets at this year’s party include, “I don’t know if you remember him, but he studied penguin poo under pressure,” and “Oh, right, she played Star Wars movies to locusts.”