Improbable Research

Ian Fieggen maintains a compendium of technical knowledge about shoelaces.

(Thanks to Mark Dionne for bringing this to our attention.)

A brief video about a bodyless robotic head named Eva is available from NASA.

Kimiko Ryokai has produced a short video demonstrating a splashy — well, spraybrush-y — way to take colors and patterns from almost anything and reproduce them somewhere (if not quite anywhere) else.

(Thanks to Ginnie Grallia for bringing this to our attention.)

An obsessive pensioner was surprised to learn he had been published in a leading scientific journal after keeping a diary for the past 20 years of how many times he mows his lawn….

So begins a report in the September 3, 2005 issue of The Daily Telegraph.

(Thanks to investigator Kristine Danowski for bringing this to our attention.)

A memorable, all-too-entertaining report in the September 28, 2000 issue of the Washington Post elaborates on our earlier observation that sometimes the Ig Nobel Prizes can bring clarity to puzzling events in the news. Here’s a characteristic snippet:

Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, called Brown’s account of events "feeble," "clueless," "shocking" and "beyond belief." Said Shays: "I’m happy you left, because that kind of . . . look in the lights like a deer tells me that you weren’t capable to do the job."

Those who seek truth will find a certain variety of it in The Journal of Lie Theory.

(Thanks to Bob O’Hara for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigtor Robert Bendesky writes:

Perhaps the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists should start a new chapter: the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Mice.

The Bureaucracy Club of Amsterdam has just joined The Bureaucracy Club.

Several reports about published reports by and about non-fictional Harry Potters appear in the September/October issue which is the special HARRY POTTER and THE EXPLODING TOADS issue) of the Annals of Improbable Research.

Two of these reports appear not just in print, but also online: "Selected Works of Harry Potter" and "Potter: Hairy."

At the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Cherpes does research on herpes.

(Thanks to John Arnold for bringing this to our attention.)

Biologist Robin Kolnicki, whose flowing red hair has luxuriated near a waterfall in Madagascar, has just joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). So, too, have the wife&husband team of condensed matter researchers
            Raquel Ribero and Marcos Avila.

Many patterns recur again and again in nature. Here is a fresh example: a National Weather Service National Hurricane Center map of "Cumulative Wind Distribution" in tropical depression Rita (which was soon to become known as "Hurricane Rita") on Saturday, September 24, 2005 at 21:36:12 MDT.

(Thanks to Phyllis Borkland for bringing this to our attention.)

[ADDENDUM, September 27, thanks to investigator Julia Lunetta:
Typhoon Longwang, position 22.0N,  139.2 E.]

First came New Math, now comes New Trig. The former was best celebrated by Tom Lehrer. The latter was invented by Norman Wildberger.

The mysterious case of the exploding toads of Hamburg burst upon a shocked public earlier this year. Now comes some clarity, perhaps.

The report "Exploding Toads: The Storied  Remains" — written by the investigative dream team of forensic entomologist Mark Benecke and Ig Nobel Prize winners C.W. Moeliker, Richard Wassersug — appears in the September/October issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.

Wikipedia reports a not-all-that-widely-known fact about Donald Knuth (Knuth wrote what many consider to be the bible of computer programming; he is also, in many ways, the father of much of what is now commonplace in the technology of displaying fonts on computer screens):

In issue 33, Mad published a partial table of the "Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures", developed by 19-year-old Donald E. Knuth, later a famed mathematician. According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.263348517438173216473 mm. The system also features such units as whatmeworry, cowznofski, vreeble, hoo and hah.

(Thanks to Mark Dionne for bringing this to our attention.)