Improbable Research

Here are some photos from the London show in this year’s Ig Nobel Tour of the U.K. and Ireland.

Even sandcastles seem to suggest something about science. Read a Bournemouth University press release about it here.

Thanks to Jonathan Newton for bringing this to our attention.

The recent novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, has been justly celebrated for an innovation: its first-person narrator is autistic and of mathematical bent. But for postal historians, the novel has weightier significance. Curious Incident is the second most compelling book that involves both (a) the mysterious death of a dog and (b) lots of mail….

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

The winners of the GUMMING-UP-THE-WORKS LIMERICK COMPETITION were announced in mini-AIR 2004-07. Each winner in some sense explored the research report:

“Adult Sudden Death Caused by Aspiration of Chewing Gum,” S.N. Njau, Forensic Science International, vol. 139, nos. 2-3, January 28, 2004, pp. 103-6. The author, who is at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, reports that:

“A 24-year-old white male died suddenly. A piece of chewing gum lodged in a pool of frothy fluid was revealed at autopsy. … No alcohol or other drugs were detected in blood or urine.”

Here some runners up:

INVESTIGATOR D. HOMUTH:
If the froth in your throat starts to trickle,
Be advised — DON’T aspire your chicle.
A Greek male, seems as how,
Died from that. (S.N. Njau)
His autopsy affirmed: Death is fickle.

INVESTIGATOR G.R. CHAMBERS:
An aspiring young man who’s from Greece
Chewed gum. He was found by police
To have choked on the spot.
The autopsy did not
Find traces of booze or hashish.

INVESTIGATOR C. MEDBERY III:
He died while chewing his gum
He was found lying flat on his bum.
We don’t really know
How many die so,
But we doubt it’s a very large sum

INVESTIGATOR B. MCGRAIL:
A Caucasian young man choked on fluid
Resulting from gum carelessly chew-ed.
Officials could see
From his blood and his pee
That he neither was ston-ed nor stew-ed.

There is an unusually incisive self-portrait of a human being who is at home in both technical and non-technical realms. It appears on the entity known as Craig’s List.