Improbable Research

"Before the Big Band, there was no space or time."

So says what we presume, or at least hope, is a typo. It appears in a curious press release issued by the University of Helsinki. The press release is curious in that it’s not clear why the university decided to write or issue it.

ADDENDA: (1) That press release directs anyone seeking more information to go to the web site of Kari Engqvist. (2) After this item appeared, we heard from Bob O’Hara of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Helsinki. He wrote:

I went to a Christmas party in the physics building in the University of Helsinki last year.  As I recall, there was no big band.  There was, however karaoke.

Bob

P.S. Perhaps we should forgive Prof. Enqvist.  He works in a building called Physicum.  I work next door, in a building called Exactum.  This means, I think, that they are assumed to work with a certain amount of imprecision.

British Military Planned Chicken-Powered Nuke
A once secret plan to build a nuclear landmine ‘run’ by live chickens has gone on public display for the first time at The National Archives, Kew, as part of the acclaimed Secret State Exhibition.

Conceived during the Cold War, the seven tonne device was the size of small truck and was designed to be buried or submerged by a British Army retreating from Soviet forces. The landmine had a plutonium core surrounded by high explosive and would have been detonated by remote control or timer, causing mass destruction and contamination over a wide area to prevent subsequent enemy occupation.

Scientists working on the project realised that the bomb could fail in winter if vital components become too cold, so they explored ways of keeping the inner workings warm. One proposal put forward consisted of filling the casing of the nuke with live chickens, who would give off sufficient heat, prior to suffocating or starving to death, to keep the delicate explosive mechanism from freezing. Despite the potential importance of chickens to the project, the mine was codenamed ‘Blue Peacock’.

So says a press release issued last year by the British National Archives

We at the Annals of Improbable Research have a large collection of puzzle solutions to which we have lost the puzzles. There seemed no reason not to publish them. The first organized collection appears in the March/April 2005 issue of the magazine.

Investigator J.L. Rincon writes:

Having lived most of my life in Argentina, but spent much of the past five years in North America and Europe, I will have you know that no great educational institution suffers more — and more unjustly! — from its name than the Universidad de Moron. From afar, though, I must admit that I now understand why this happens. As an Argentinian, I sigh. But as a citizen of the world, I chuckle.

Possibly with the tacit approval or disapproval of a distinguished colleague, Dr. Ken Longenecker of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS).

So, too, has Josh Newby, the perhaps-soon-to-be-famous graduate student in physical chemistry at Purdue University.