Improbable Research

Using sensors in underwear, scientists can accurately zero in on small everyday tasks.

That statement appears in a February 27, 2006 article in the Los Angeles Times.

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

A tonsorial fashion analyzed (two aspects): (1) transformational geometry and iteration in cornrow hair styles; and (2) logarithmic curves in cornrow hairstyles.

Thanks to Investigators Larissa and Bob Reeve for bringing this and their own cornrows to our attention.)

In the United States, a country where everyone has a nodding acquaintance with learning, a prominent education thinker tried a daring experiment. Steve Nadis explains:

I always felt that kids who are cut off from television are kind of out of it in a quaint, Amish sort of way. Which is why I’ve trained my children to become good TV watchers — or at least I’d thought they were trained as such. But now the strategy has appeared to backfire as my three-year-old is in open revolt. One night over the weekend we watched a family video (something about a dog?) and the next night the women’s figure skating on the Olympics (which I’d taped the night before). The next night, as we were getting ready for bedtime, my youngest upstart remarked: “I hope we don’t have to watch another movie tonight. That’s boring!” Instead, I was forced to read her a book before bed, all the while feeling like a total, unmitigated failure as a parent. So I ask you (at the risk of repeating myself): What’s the matter with kids today?

Lots of people, not just U.S. government employees, are having profitable fun talking about lie detectors. Alice Shirrell Kaswell of our staff reports that intrepid inventor and scientific superman Britton Chance is working on one. In an article in OE Magazine, he describes his hand-held cogno-sensor. He also describes himself, with characteristic modesty:

Sitting in his office at the University of Pennsylvania, Britton Chance could easily just rest on his laurels, content. Words like “legend” come to mind.

But what else do you call a man who fished with Ernest Hemingway and has the stuffed marlin to prove it, who patented

There exists a video of a kinder, gentler table saw and a hot dog.

Note that you have to replace the blade and the brake cartridge whenever it is set off.

(Thanks to Investigator Mark Dionne for bringing the note, if not the hotdog or the saw, to our attention.)

What do Joe Navarro, M.A., and John R. Schafer, M.A. say the FBI says about detecting that hard-to-define thing called deception? It’s a long story, and it’s in the July 2001 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. The fundamental thing, the possible key to it all, they imply, is this:

When individuals tell the truth, they often make every effort to ensure that other people understand. In contrast, liars attempt to manage others? perceptions.