Philip M Parker is the world’s fastest book author, and given that he has been at it only for about five years and already has more than 85,000 books to his name, he is also probably the most prolific. Parker is also the most wide-ranging of authors – the phrase “shoes and ships and sealing […]
Month: January 2008
January mini-AIR
The January issue of mini-AIR just went out. Topics include: Troy and the Military-Industrial Complex; Burnt Food, Grails, Clocky, Molasses, P.D.Q. Bach; Bjork-Shiley Convexo-Concave Valves Poets; Dog Dandruff and Human Semen linked; Cordial, Dream, Dentistry, Dead; etc. (If you would like to have mini-AIR automatically sent to your email box every month, please subscribe to […]
Solving The Cat’s Purr Mystery using Accelerometers
In order to measure the domestic cat’s purrs and how purr vibration is spread throughout its body ENDEVCO Model 22 accelerometers were used. Weighing a mere 0.14 gram, this is the world’s smallest accelerometer. It mounts adhesively, requires no external power and is ground isolated. It is typically used on such small objects as scaled […]
Cost per page of books by U.S. presidential candidates
Investigator Paul Greenberg, an economist, submits this research study: While the U.S. Presidential caucuses and primaries march on, a more subtle race among the candidates persists, the race for the reading attentions of the voting masses. For a mere $250 investment at the publisher’s suggested retail price, it is possible to purchase 13 books by […]
PHILOSOPHY LESSON: Dogs, trees and quarrels
Non-philosophers sometimes ask “What do philosophers do?” One thing philosophers do is: quarrel with other philosophers. Here is a small extract of one side of piece of a philosophers’ quarrel: My attention has been restricted to three chapters of a fifteen chapter book. For those who are convinced by the arguments that did not convince […]
Jan-Feb Improbable Research is online
The special Reclassification/Renaming issue of the Annals of Improbable Research (vol 14, no 1, Jan-Feb 2008) is now online.
The Big Idea, and the Rise of the Finger
The Big Idea, and the Rise of the Finger Until recently, people who did research on fingers either measured them or, if they were broken, repaired them. Then came an idea about what fingers might mean. Here is the idea in a six-part nutshell: 1. The body’s many hormones — chemical messengers — are involved in many […]
Barf-o-Meter Development
Investigator Larry Geller writes from Oahu, Hawaii: To the best of my knowledge, no one has attempted to relate the probability of vomiting to wind speed and wave heights before. Faced with predictable passenger reaction aboard a ferry that runs daily between the Hawaii islands of Oahu and Maui despite high seas and wind (see […]
Snails, slugs, and speed
Snails carry mail faster than postmen, says a January 25, 2008 Reuters report. This sets up a potential data transport contest/showdown between snails and slugs (see below for the slug part of it). The snail report says: WARSAW – It’s official. Postal delivery is as slow as snails, at least in Poland. An IT worker, […]
Stalin World adds beatings
Whippings and interrogations can now, at last, we are told, be purchased for about 35 euros at the theme park popularly known as Stalin World. Viliumas Malinauskus, the park’s founder, was awarded the 2001 Ig Nobel Peace Prize. According to a January 22, 2008 Raw Story report, which includes a Reuters video report: Soviet theme […]