Sufficiently small animals cannot be hurt in a fall from any height: A monkey is too big, a squirrel is on the edge, but a mouse is completely safe. The mouse-sized people in Dr. Cyclops could have leapt off the tabletop with a cry of “Geronimo!” secure in the knowledge that they were too small to be hurt.
So says Michael C. LaBarbera in his study “The Biology of B-Movie Monsters.”
Why is Dasani - the British bottlers of which were honored with the 2004 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize — now on the lips of so many Canadians, in name if not in substance?
Perhaps it has to do with the combination of this July 17, 2006 headline in the Toronto Globe and Mail:
and this October 30, 2006 report by Bloomberg News:
Bottled water is far more expensive than municipal water. A liter (33.8 ounces) of tap water in Canada costs taxpayers an average of less than one-10th of a cent, Toronto’s city government says. That means a liter of bottled water selling for C$2.50 is almost 3,000 times more expensive.
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, the world’s biggest bottler, uses municipal water from Calgary and Brampton, Ontario, for its Dasani brand. The company filters the water five times to remove chemicals, odors and bacteria, and adds minerals to improve the taste, spokeswoman Stephanie Baxter says.
That Ig Nobel citation explains that that 2004 prize was awarded to:
The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert ordinary tap water into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers.
Investigator Chris McManus writes:
How’s this for a correction from this week’s Nature? All that number of authors and they still managed to leave 13 off… And can those thirteen be authors of the correction saying, “We inadvertently omitted the names of the following authors”. Is it possible to inadvertently omit one’s own name from a paper of which one is an author?
Here is the correction to which he refers:
Nature 443, 1013(26 October 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature05152
Corrigendum: The DNA sequence and biological annotation of human chromosome 1
S. G. Gregory 1, K. F. Barlow 1, K. E. McLay 1, R. Kaul 1, D. Swarbreck 1, A. Dunham 1, C. E. Scott 1, K. L. Howe 1, K. Woodfine 1, C. C. A. Spencer 1, M. C. Jones 1, C. Gillson 1, S. Searle 1, Y. Zhou 1, F. Kokocinski 1, L. McDonald 1, R. Evans 1, K. Phillips 1, A. Atkinson 1, R. Cooper 1, C. Jones 1, R. E. Hall 1, T. D. Andrews 1, C. Lloyd 1, R. Ainscough 1, J. P. Almeida 1, K. D. Ambrose 1, F. Anderson 1, R. W. Andrew 1, R. I. S. Ashwell 1, K. Aubin 1, A. K. Babbage 1, C. L. Bagguley 1, J. Bailey 1, R. Banerjee 1, H. Beasley 1, G. Bethel 1, C. P. Bird 1, S. Bray-Allen 1, J. Y. Brown 1, A. J. Brown 1, S. P. Bryant 1, D. Buckley 1, D. C. Burford 1, W. D. H. Burrill 1, J. Burton 1, J. Bye 1, C. Carder 1, J. C. Chapman 1, S. Y. Clark 1, G. Clarke 1, C. Clee 1, S. M. Clegg 1, V. Cobley 1, R. E. Collier 1, N. Corby 1, G. J. Coville 1, J. Davies 1, R. Deadman 1, P. Dhami 1, O. Dovey 1, M. Dunn 1, M. Earthrowl 1, A. G. Ellington 1, H. Errington 1, L. M. Faulkner 1, A. Frankish 1, J. Frankland 1, L. French 1, P. Garner 1, J. Garnett 1, L. Gay 1, M. R. J. Ghori 1, R. Gibson 1, L. M. Gilby 1, W. Gillett 1, R. J. Glithero 1, D. V. Grafham 1, S. M. Gribble 1, C. Griffiths 1, S. Griffiths-Jones 1, R. Grocock 1, S. Hammond 1, E. S. I. Harrison 1, E. Hart 1, E. Haugen 1, P. D. Heath 1, S. Holmes 1, K. Holt 1, P. J. Howden 1, A. R. Hunt 1, S. E. Hunt 1, G. Hunter 1, J. Isherwood 1, R. James 1, C. Johnson 1, D. Johnson 1, A. Joy 1, M. Kay 1, J. K. Kershaw 1, M. Kibukawa 1, A. M. Kimberley 1, A. King 1, A. J. Knights 1, H. Lad 1, G. Laird 1, C. F. Langford 1, S. Lawlor 1, D. A. Leongamornlert 1, D. M. Lloyd 1, J. Loveland 1, J. Lovell 1, M. J. Lush 1, R. Lyne 1, S. Martin 1, M. Mashreghi-Mohammadi 1, L. Matthews 1, N. S. W. Matthews 1, S. McLaren 1, S. Milne 1, S. Mistry 1, M. J. F. M. oore 1, T. Nickerson 1, C. N. O’Dell 1, K. Oliver 1, A. Palmeiri 1, S. A. Palmer 1, R. D. Pandian 1, A. Parker 1, D. Patel 1, A. V. Pearce 1, A. I. Peck 1, S. Pelan 1, K. Phelps 1, B. J. Phillimore 1, R. Plumb 1, K. M. Porter 1, E. Prigmore 1, J. Rajan 1, C. Raymond 1, G. Rouse 1, C. Saenphimmachak 1, H. K. Sehra 1, E. Sheridan 1, R. Shownkeen 1, S. Sims 1, C. D. Skuce 1, M. Smith 1, C. Steward 1, S. Subramanian 1, N. Sycamore 1, A. Tracey 1, A. Tromans 1, Z. Van Helmond 1, M. Wall J. M. Wallis 1, S. White 1, S. L. Whitehead 1, J. E. Wilkinson 1, D. L. Willey 1, H. Williams 1, L. Wilming 1, P. W. Wray 1, Z. Wu 1, A. Coulson 1, M. Vaudin 1, J. E. Sulston 1, R. Durbin 1, T. Hubbard 1, R. Wooster 1, I. Dunham 1, N. P. Carter 1, G. McVean 1, M. T. Ross 1, J. Harrow 1, M. V. Olson 1, S. Beck 1, J. Rogers 1 and D. R. Bentley 1
Nature 441, 315–321 (2006)
We inadvertently omitted the names of the following authors: R. Banerjee, S. P. Bryant, D. C. Burford, W. D. H. Burrill, S. M. Clegg, P. Dhami, O. Dovey, L. M. Faulkner, S. M. Gribble, C. F. Langford, R. D. Pandian, K. M. Porter and E. Prigmore.
Philosopher-Accountant James Mahoney writes:
I used to think that mankind’s greatest achievements were narcotic pain relief (physical pain is horrible) and air conditioning (being cool and dry when it’s hot and humid is wonderful). Now I’m starting to think it’s the modern supermarket.
What do you think?
UPDATE: Investigator Robert Bendesky responds:
In 1976, Viktor Belenko, a Soviet pilot, flew his MiG-25 fighter into Japanese airspace, and defected to the West. He came to the US, and was set up with an apartment. The first thing he did in America was visit a modern supermarket.
He was overwhelmed at the quantity and quality of food items that were available. Aisles crammed with goods. Fresh fruit, vegetables and meat. And no long lines. He was sure that this was not typical; he believed that the CIA set up this elaborate store just to fool him, or possibly it was a special store for only the ruling class.Belenko’s autobiograpy is called MIG Pilot.
(Research has shown that) if women could choose who they’d like to be impregnated by, they’d choose a rock star.
So says Daniel Levitin, musician and associate professor who holds the Bell Chair in the Psychology of Electronic Communication at McGill University, in an August 23, 2006 interview Wired News interview.
(Thanks to investigator Jim Cowdery for bringing this to our attention.)
How do porcupines make love? Wendy Cooper discovered the answer while poking around the basement of the Australian National University library in Canberra about five years ago. Cooper is a parasitologist. She studies parasites, not porcupines. She also, in the course of her work, studies scientific journals. That was how she acquired her professional knowledge of porcupines’ prickly procreation procedures.
Cooper found two studies written (one with co-authors) by Albert Shadle, of the University of Buffalo, New York, in 1946….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.
Investigator Steve Smith writes:
There’s an update from the BBC [on October 25, 2006] on the pigeon eating pelican: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6083468.stm
From the date, it’s unclear whether this could be the
same bird or incident seen in the video (but the
pelican in the video looks more like an Eastern white
than an American white to me).
Question: What kinds of curses do you find in the Athenian tablets?
Answer: … A lot of them have to do with legal cases. They say things like, “Bind the tongue and the thoughts of so-and-so, who is about to testify against me on Monday.” We have some that are aimed at rival musicians or actors, and a couple that seem to be connected with athletics. We have some that run something like this, “Bind Helen, so that she is unsuccessful when she flirts or makes love with Demetrius.” But the great majority of them seem to be connected with lawsuits. This actually corroborates evidence from other sources suggesting that the Greeks thought Athenians were abnormally enamored of lawsuits–much as many Americans today think that New Yorkers are especially litigious.
So says Christopher A. Faraone in a 2001 interview.
It took Mary Louise Parker five years to obtain the patent (U.S. #7,093,832) for her Conversation Generator. The application, filed on August 9, 2001, was granted on August 22, 2006. The device is, officially, “a plate or other utilitarian object for generating conversations.”
(Thanks to investigator Martin Gardiner for bringing this to our attention.)
If you’re near Champaign, Illinois, come to the Improbable Research show on Wednesday, October 25, at 3:00 pm at the Beckman Institute. It will feature Ig Nobel Prize winners Dan Simons (attention and gorilla suits) and Theo Gray (the periodic table table) , and Ig Nobel winner George Goble’s colleague Joe Cychosz (the world’s quickest barbeque, using liquid oxygen), and computer palmist Joe Futrelle. There will also be an Ig Nobel mini-opera — “Inertial Makes the World Go Around” — performed a capella by the Girls Next Door. The Beckman is, of course, where Ig Nobel winner Jillian Clarke did her research on the validity of the Five-Second Rule.
If you are near Decatur, come to the Improbable Research talk by Marc Abrahams on Thursday, October 26, at 8:00 pm at Millikin University. It’s part of the ACUBE meeting. It’s in the Leighty-Tabor Science Building, room 001.
Both of these Improbable Research events are open to the public; and both are free.
It’s the headline someone at the University of Oxford press office could not resist writing:
(Thanks to investigator Kristine Danowski for bringing this to our attention.)
Investigator Claudiu I. Muntele writes, “Doing some literature search I came across this entry and I thought you could use it for something”:
SEXUAL FUNCTION AND DYSFUNCTION • ABSTRACT
The Journal of Urology, Volume 164, Issue 5, November 2000, Pages 1851-1859
Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel, Allen Seftel et al.
Here are today’s Science-Reporting-Quotes-of-the-Day. Both are from an article by Jennifer Kahn in the October 22, 2006 issue of the New York Times:
Working on pig flesh at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Anderson found that fat cells exposed to a 1210-nanometer beam absorbed twice as much energy as skin cells did.
and
Then there’s the “clenching” factor: “When the buttock is tensed, the cellulite on it will look worse,” says Dr. Leonard Miller, a plastic surgeon affiliated with Harvard Medical School. “When I look at these images, I often notice that the buttock in the ‘before’ photo is slightly tensed. It makes a difference.”
A new experiment (which may be inspired by the work of 1998 Ig Nobel Prize winner Troy Hurtubise) demonstrates the comparative value of print books:
One of Oklahoma’s nominees for state superintendent of education has proposed a unique idea for protecting students from outbreaks of violence. Bill Crozier, a Union City Republican going against incumbent Democrat Sandy Garrett, said he believes old textbooks could be used to stop bullets shot from weapons wielded by school intruders.
If elected, he said he would put thick used textbooks under every desk for students to use in self-defense.
He gave Eyewitness News 5 a videotape showing he and others shooting weapons, such as an AK-47 and a 9 mm pistol, at books in a field near Minco. They conducted the experiment to see how far bullets would penetrate the books.
So says an October 18, 2006 report by Oklahoma City television station KOCO Channel 9.
(Thanks to investigator Joe Berg for bringing this to our attention.)
Someone video-recorded a pelican consuming a pigeon.
Kees Moeliker, our European Bureau Chief and the curator of birds at the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, examined the video, did some research, and explains that:
According to the Handbook of the Birds of the World, the seven species of pelicans known to the world feed almost exclusively on fish. It is only the Australian pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus) that is know to take an occasional bird, like a gull or a duck. The bird in this video is the American white pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) living in an urban park, obviously tame and it may have been fed a (dead) pigeon – like feeding bread to ducks – as the actual prey capture is not shown on the video. The live pigeons in this video do come dangerously close to the pelicans, so I am inclined to conclude that this is ‘The first videoed case of predation on a pigeon (Columba livia) by a tame American white pelican’.
(Thanks to investigator Jessica Girard for bringing the video to our attention.)
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