Improbable Research

Sometimes blond, sometimes blue University of Stockholm linguist Mikael Parkvall has just joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS).

Herman van Goubergen produced a downloadable, fold-togetherable origami gecko and fly on a wall. Here is a photo.

Howtoons are toons that tell how to do some particular thing — usually some spectacular technical kind of thing. One such thing can be seen in this AVI video of a little girl riding a hovercraft. The video was taken during the preparations for one of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies.

Here’s a quick quiz, which we offer free for teachers who like to stimulate thought. Use it to do that very thing with your students.

THE QUIZ QUESTION: Read the following explanation from a November 7, 2005 press release issued by Stanford University. How many different alternative explanations can you devise in sixty (60) seconds? Here is the "official" explanation:

GENDER DIFFERENCES ARE A LAUGHING MATTER, STANFORD BRAIN STUDY SHOWS

… After analyzing the data, the researchers found that men and women share
much of the same humor-response system; both use to a
similar degree the part of the brain responsible for semantic knowledge
and juxtaposition and the part involved in language processing. But they
also found that some brain regions were activated more in women. These
included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a greater emphasis on
language and executive processing in women, and the nucleus accumbens,
or NAcc, which is part of the mesolimbic reward center….

Drug companies, some of them, have discovered a pool of well-schooled, well-groomed, cheerful people to hire as sales representatives, according to a November 28 report by Stephanie Saul in The New York Times:

Anyone who has seen the parade of sales representatives through a
doctor’s waiting room has probably noticed that they are frequently
female and invariably good looking. Less recognized is the fact that a
good many are recruited from the cheerleading ranks.

Known for
their athleticism, postage-stamp skirts and persuasive enthusiasm,
cheerleaders have many qualities the drug industry looks for in its
sales force. Some keep their pompoms active, like Onya, a sculptured
former college cheerleader. On Sundays she works the sidelines for the
Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to
prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection….