Improbable Research

How many books written in seemingly obscure languages are misfiled and languishing unfindable in libraries? Joyce Flynn’s experience at Harvard suggests the answer is: a lot.

Flynn, a researcher in Celtic languages, discovered some common mishaps that no one discusses much….

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

If you don’t have time to properly evaluate an investment opportunity, just use the Hair Rule: any investment in a member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists is a guaranteed success.

So says the mildly elusive editor of the web site valleywag, citing as an example a man who is not a member of the LFHCfS.

(Thanks to investigator Betsy Devine for bringing this to our attention.)

Creating a brand new academic discipline – neuroarthistory – Prof John Onians uses the results from new scanning techniques to answer questions such as:

What happens in the brain of the modern artist as he or she works? • What happened in the brain of an artistic genius like Leonardo Da Vinci?

So says a press release issued by the University of East Anglia. The press release identifies the researcher variously as Professor Onians and as Professor Onions:

“The most interesting aspect of neuroarthistory is the way it enables us to get inside the minds of people who either could not or did not write about their work,” said Prof Onions.

(Thanks to investigator Yahoram Blumenfeld for bringing this to our attention.)

A one-minute video shows a bird with skill that equals or surpasses that of Michael Jackson when Jackson was in his prime.

Kees Moeliker, our European Bureau Chief who is also curator of birds at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, says:

It is the Red-capped manakin (Pipra mentalis) which occurs in humid forests from SE Mexico, south to E Panama, NW Colombia and NW Ecuador. Stiles & Skutch (1989) in A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica, describe this behaviour of the male as “backwards slides with legs stretched up and yellow thighs exposed.”

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