Improbable Research

From New Scientist’s Feedback column:

HAVE you wondered why manufacturers have taken to adding scents to more and more consumer products – including car tyres (28 March 2009)? If so, a study in the US Journal of Consumer Research, has this answer: “Product scent may be particularly effective at enhancing memory for product information as a function of its ability to enhance a product’s distinctiveness within its surrounding context.”

Shorn of its clunky language, what this means is that if products have a smell you’re likely to remember them better. That makes sense to us. We always make a point of remembering which products are scented so we’ll be sure never to buy them again.

This month’s Bow-Tie-Wearing Science Book Reviewer of the Month is: Fred Bortz.

Karaoke-triggered killings and fights remind us why the Ig Nobel peace prize was awarded to the inventor of karaoke. The New York Times reports:

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

In 2004 the Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

Meena Kadri looks at the psychology of tile placement:

Disrupting Urination Norms
In Mumbai someone kindly explained to me the custom of putting wall tiles of gods from different religions along street facades. They’re positioned at pissing height – and act as a perfect deterrent in a reverent nation.

From the book Maxims and Instructions for the Boiler Room [etc.], N. Hawkins, Theo. Audel and Co., New York, 1902:

“THE INSPECTION OF STEAM BOILERS.
Let it be clearly understood that if there were no steam generators using steam under pressure there would be no boiler inspection, and no licensing of engineers.”

[from "Snippets of Instruction," in AIR 15:4.]

This recording, from about the year 1860, of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville singing “Au Clair de la Lune” is now but a ghost of whatever it sounded like as the song left the man’s mouth. Think of it, if you like, as a song attempted on a distant night about a moon that maybe have been barely visible through a perhaps cloudy, cloudy sky. The song was also, one infers from the image of M. Scott de Martinville, filtered through a mustache.