Improbable Research

ABC News reports that:

Roo poo used to make paper
Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online

Friday, 18 February 2005
Paper made from kangaroo and wallaby dung has shot an Australian paper company into the global spotlight.

Joanna Gair, manager of handmade paper company Creative Paper Tasmania, says production of ‘roo poo paper’ only started in the past two weeks but she has been thinking about the idea for some time.

"I’ve been inspired by the African paper makers who’ve created an enormous industry out of elephant dung paper," she says. "I thought we needed an Australian version."

The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) has six new members — three of each sex, but imperfectly balanced across the southern and northern hemispheres.

England’s reputation for bad food is unfair. It distracts from the country’s reputation for bad music. Emily Cockayne, formerly at Oxford University and now an associate lecturer with the Open University, is doing her bit to correct the imbalance.

Cockayne studied the two centuries she believes were crucial for establishing Britain as a vibrant producer of boiler-factory-quality music. Her complacency-rattling report, "Cacophony, or Vile Scrapers on Vile Instruments: Bad Music in Early Modern English Towns", appeared in 2002 in the journal Urban History….

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

Actor Dick Van Patten has a line of cat food and dog food, which, if the ads are not misleading, he finds quite tasty.

Dean Kamen holds 150 patents. He invented the Segway, oversees a national high school robotics competition. Owns his own island, even, in the Long Island Sound.

So it may seem strange and slightly sad that he found himself drinking his own pee last year in South Carolina.

Hold it: Things aren’t as bleak as they sound….

So begins a December 14, 2005 report in the Newport Daily News.

(Thanks to IP Funny for bringing this to our attention.)