Improbable Research

Former Ig Nobel Economics Prize winners Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling continue their successful pattern of making news. A May 25, 2006 Bloomberg News report gives the latest chapter:

Lay, Skilling Convicted of Fraud That Doomed Enron

Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who built Enron Corp. into the nation’s seventh-largest company and then drove it into bankruptcy, were convicted of orchestrating a fraud that made the energy trader the symbol of corporate deceit in America. Jurors in federal court in Houston deliberated six days before finding Lay, Enron’s former chairman, and Skilling, its former chief executive officer, guilty today of fraud, conspiracy and other charges for lying to investors about the company’s finances….

The pair shared their Ig Nobel Prize, in 2002, with all the other executives, corporate directors, and auditors of Enron, Lernaut & Hauspie, Adelphia, Bank of Commerce and Credit International, Cendant, CMS Energy, Duke Energy, Dynegy, Gazprom, Global Crossing, HIH Insurance, Informix, Kmart, Maxwell Communications, McKessonHBOC, Merrill Lynch, Merck, Peregrine Systems, Qwest Communications, Reliant Resources, Rent-Way, Rite Aid, Sunbeam, Tyco, Waste Management, WorldCom, Xerox, and Arthur Andersen, for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world.

An eminent mathematician sent us this plaintive note. This person requests anonymity, for reasons that should be obvious.

I have to write a referee’s report on a paper. I am not submitting the following but it conveys my true feelings:

The authors present a straightforward proof of an obvious result based on a question that no one has asked motivated by their misunderstanding of the actual question by [FAMOUS GODLIKE MATHEMATICIAN'S NAME REDACTED]. The simplicity of the proof, however, is more than compensated by the authors’ lack of clarity, and their overall carelessness.

Mr Inoue is tormented by daft questions, but takes them in his stride. “People approach me all the time and ask me if I can’t help their husbands sing better, and I always say the same thing. If the singer was any good, he would be a pro and make a living at it. He’s bad because he’s like the rest of us. So we might as well just sit back and enjoy it.”

These days, he makes a living selling, among other things, an eco-friendly detergent and a cockroach repellent for karaoke machines. “Cockroaches get inside the machines and build nests, chew on the wires,” he says. Friends say he is the ideas man, while his wife, who works in the same Osaka office, helps bring them to life.

That’s part of an extensive interview with Daisuke Inoue in the May 24, 2006 Independent. Mr Inoue was awarded the 2004 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

“Christian Sexual Addiction” is a concept publicized by the American Association of Certified Christian Sexual Addiction Specialists. Two of the club’s leaders have published a psycho-sexy study:

“Sexual Addiction and ADHD: Is There A Connection?” Richard Blankenship and Mark Laaser, Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, vol. 11, nos. 1-2, January-June 2004, pp. 7-20.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the study appears to say, is a key component of Christian Sexual Addiction.

Mark A. Daeschel, Jessica Just and Joy Waite have submitted a patent application (#20060013723) for what they called a “wine-based disinfectant.”

Users and admirers (and even unknowing beneficiaries of the effects of) UnderEase (the odor-trapping underwear with a removable charcoal filter, which earned its inventor, Buck Weimer, the 2001 Ig Nobel Biology Prize) may already be aware of a recently-announced device for dogs.

The me-too inventor of this new canine appurtenance calls it the Dogone Dog Gas Neutralizing Pad. He says that it:

Uses our famous activated charcoal cloth (washable and reusable)! A starter hole is placed in the cloth in order to help you locate the suggested tail hole. Carefully measure tail and cut-out hole to proper size.

(Thanks to Investigator Julia Lunetta for bringing this to our attention.)

The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) Men-of-the-Year — Falk Schuch, Andreas Linsner and Kai Jung — were a big hit on their first-ever visit to The Netherlands. The photo here shows them at a publicity event in Amsterdam, accompanied by an unidentified local woman. The trio traveled to the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam to take part in the opening of the European Bureau of the Annals of Improbable Research.

Their subsequent tour of the country (including the Amsterdam stop) came about at the invitation of insistent, adoring new fans.

(NOTE: At the request of a noble personage, on May 25, 2006 we added a second photo to this blog entry.)

The invention of the 35-day month is, or was, a triumph for its inventors. Those inventors are (according to a September 22,2004 U.S. Department of Justice document): Sanjay Kumar, the former Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Computer Associates International, Inc.; and Stephen Richards, the company’s former Head of Worldwide Sales.

(Thanks to Investigator Vladimir Reikine for bringing this to our attention.)

Lee Shang Pin and colleagues at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore report that they have made a system for interacting with pet chickens via the Internet.

(Thanks to Investigator Bizi Jie for bringing this to our attention.)

Remind Patient to Take Medication at Certain Time of Day

Success has been reported in making use of a dog’s internal alarm clock, to remind the partner to take medication on time. Training the dog to expect to be fed or to have a cookie break at the same time each day will train it to signal at that time. Many dogs will pick up their food bowl and bring it to the partner at the same time each day, as if they can read the clock. If doing so is rewarded, it can serve to alert the partner it is time to stop an ongoing activity and to take the prescribed medication.

This is one of the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners’s list of “Tasks to mitigate certain disabling illnesses classified as mental impairments under the Americans With Disabilities Act.”

The Improbable Research European Bureau opens tonight at 8:00 (doors open at 7:30) with a gala affair at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. Skimpy details (some of them, anyway) are on our Schedule page. Full details — including an elegant program listing — are on the Museum’s web site.
Many intriguing people will be there.

Dr. Matsumi Suzuki has given the Mona Lisa a voice, sort of. A May 18, 2006 report by TurkishPress.com says:

Cracking “The Da Vinci Code” could have been easier — well, maybe — if the characters had enlisted the Japanese lab which has “recreated” the voices of Leonardo and Mona Lisa. Using methods employed in criminal investigations, the Japan Acoustic Lab says it has analyzed the skeletal structures of the historical figures’ faces to replicate how their voices would have sounded….

Dr. Suzuki is a co-winner of the 2002 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, for promoting peace and harmony between the species by inventing Bow-Lingual, a computer-based automatic dog-to-human language translation device.

His new achievement — allowing Mona to moan and groan and chatter — appears to be involved with promoting the new movie version of The Da Vinci Code.

A very simple heuristic method for locating the nose is to classify the nose frequency as being the highest frequency bin that contains power greater than a certain threshold value, and the nose range as the range bin with the highest power in that frequency bin.

So says Mark D. McDonnell in his study “Wavelet Based Detection and Fitting of Backscatter Ionogram Leading Edges.”

Jaakko Ala-Paavola is considered to be an authority on fractal cabbage.

There is an optics lesson of some sort in a July 19, 2004 report published by the prosaically-named Big News Network:

Lens falling into chocolate delays movie

The remake of Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory encountered a delay on the set in Britain when a $540,000 camera lens fell into a vat of chocolate….

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