Improbable Research

Here are two new Filth-in-Foods paeans. They were composed in tribute to Sidebottom’s classic ‘Fundamentals of Microanalytical Entomology: A Practical Guide to Detecting and Identifying Filth in Foods.’ These paeans are part of an ongoing project that was introduced in mini-AIR 2004-01.

INVESTIGATOR HEATHER HEWITT:
Olsen, Sidebottom, and Knight
Endeavor to help shine a light
On what makes food dirty:
Regarding food pure’ty,
The “five second rule” isn’t right.

INVESTIGATOR DAVID WEINBERGER:
The book by Sidebottom is lunch-
Time reading for a scary bunch
Who look into their meal
With a bug-ey?d zeal
And savor its every crunch.

The most nanoscopically sweeping and comprensive — and according to some critics, the most impassioned — Nano-Lecture delivered at the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was by Eric Lander, on the topic THE GENOME. See it here. This is the fifth of the five Nano-Lectures weve posted.

All five of the Nano-Lectures can be heard on NPR Science Friday’s archived broadcast of the ceremony. Hear it here.

(NOTE: If you have a suggestion for someone who would be a splendid Nano-Lecturer at the 2004 ceremony (which will be held Thursday evening, September 30, at Harvard University), please let us know.)

Perhaps the most definitionally piercing Nano-Lecture delivered at the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was by Harvard College senior Genevieve Reynolds, on the topic EDUCATION. See it here. This is the fourth of the five Nano-Lectures we’ll be posting.

The new version of Portfolio of a Genius has just arrived. For the better part of a decade, we have been receiving the laboriously crafted, increasingly thick versions of this wondrous work. They arrive in our mailbox at the post office, always unanticipated, always surprising by their very existence.

The author, James E. Shepherd, Jr. — the subject and author of the Portfolio — switched from paper to CD a few years ago, perhaps at the request of the heavily burdened postal workers of the world.

Each new paper version was thicker than its predecessor, and weightier, too. “Mighty thick and mighty heavy” would be a good way to describe the later pre-CD incarnations.

The CD versions are of course svelter, but also fuller than ever with documentation of the life, and correspondence, and especially the correspondence about the corresponence, of Mr. Shepherd. Each new version contains all that was in its predecessors, and also copies of all correspondence sent and received pertaining thereto.

A web version now exists; you can see it here. We are intending to schedule time to schedule time to begin to read it some day. Perhaps you will, too.

‘This study assessed the effects of the odour and ingestion of garlic bread on family interactions.” With those opening words, Alan R Hirsch of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, in Chicago, Illinois, declared the purpose and the breadth of his research.

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.