Improbable Research

David Brown describes a simple way to do a “savant” trick: calculate the day of the week for any specified date. (For example: was March 12, 1401, a Sunday, a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Thursday, a Friday, or a Saturday?) He says:

My point here is simply to suggest that though some savant feats are remarkable, things like this can be explained more simply. That a savant may be an idiot, surrounded by a sea of disability, I don’t think, requires us to overestimate what is involved in the little they can do. I should think it’s quite possible for some, to have above average ability in one area and subnormal in many others.

Steve Nadis is the is the chief holy grail hunter in all of science. Years ago, he began a relentless quest to find and document all the holy grails pursued by all the scientists everywhere. His latest collection, fixating on astronomy’s holy grails, appears in the May/June issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.

David Blackburn’s “Dinner a la commode,” published in the February 23, 2006 issue of the Oxford Student, is a small but salient entry in the annals of engineering.

(Thanks to Investigator Alasdair Kergon for bringing this to our attention.)

We have written about Professor Frank Fish (of West Chester University) before. He studies fish. We may write about him again. In the May/June 2006 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research, we celebrate his career, in words and pictures. The article also appears online, which is why we mention it here.

Hitler Cats is a blog about cats that look like Hitler.

(Thanks to Metafilter for bringing this to our attention.)