Improbable Research

Pink flamingo plant closing

LEOMINSTER — Union Products Inc., the original manufacturer of the plastic pink flamingo, will close its doors by Nov. 1, according to the company’s president.

Production of the flamingos stopped in June, along with the company’s other product lines, and the company is now in the process of liquidation, according to its president, Dennis L. Plante.

So says a September 21, 2006 report in the flamingo-hometown paper, the Leominster Sentinel & Enterprise. (An October 20, 2006 report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel gives further details.)

Don Featherstone, who created the plastic pink flamingo, was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1996. Don and his wife, Nancy, return to the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony almost every year to take a bow — they inevitably are greeted with delirious applause.

This is not the first unhappy factory-related news concerning the flamingos. In December 2001 we, together with the Museum of Bad Art,launched the Plastic Pink Flamingo Boycott. The boycott was in reaction to somebody — presumably someone in the factory — monkeying with the stylish “Don Featherstone” signature that traditionally signified a flamingo’s authenticity. Countless flamingo fanciers joined the boycott, and eventually the factory relented from its strange de-Featherstoneing action. But perhaps the flamingo population never recovered from the effects of that factory monkeying, or perhaps just the company never recovered.

Our friend Don Featherstone is alive and well. Now we hope that someone will save the flamingos. Please spread the word!

Kerry Michael has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. She says:

I’m not quite to the level of luxuriousness of some of the members, but I’m only a first-year PhD student. After four years of having no time to get a haircut, I’m sure I’ll be there too!

Kerry C. Michael, LFHCfS
Department of Biobehavioral Health
College of Health and Human Development
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

(Click on the photo to see more detail.)

Here are two headlines:

Horny beetles have tiny testes: study

–ABC, October 17, 2006

and

Bodybuilders Have Tiny Testes

–Annals of Improbable Research, January-February 2006

(Thanks to investigator Ed Lewondowski for bringing the beetles to our attention.)

Todd C Riniolo is hot, hot, hot. That’s what the data shows. The data reside on the website ratemyprofessors.com, where college students can rate their teachers on teaching quality and hotness.

Professor Riniolo is chair of the department of social sciences at Medaille College in Buffalo, New York. His ratemyprofessors quality rating is 4.8 (of a possible 5), and he is officially HOT. The hotness is indicated by an orange chilli pepper next to his name.

Professor Riniolo is lead author on a newly published study called “Hot or Not: Do Professors Perceived as Physically Attractive Receive Higher Student Evaluations?” …

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

Cow tipping, by legend, is a pastime for adventuresome youths in bucolic settings. But for professionals in New England, cow tipping is a serious, semi-veterinary endeavor.

James M. Patterson’s narrated slide show, for Valley News, explains.

(Thanks to Janice Brown for bringing this to our attention.)