Improbable Research

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 wax, cabbages and kings” is not the half a per cent of it. Nor are the classic subjects foreign to him.

He has authored 188 books related to shoes, 10 about ships, 219 about wax, six about sour red cabbage pickles, and six about royal jelly supplements….

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

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.

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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 models, circuit boards and disk drives.

During tests, the cats relaxed on blankets, and were encouraged to purr by occasionally stroking them. The small, lightweight Model 22 accelerometers were placed directly on the skin of the cats and stabilised using washable make-up glue and medical tape. Each recording session lasted between 6 and 10 minutes. Data was recorded on DAT recorders and analysed.

Results indicated that despite size and different genetics, all of the individual cats have strong purr frequencies that fall within the range of a multitude of therapeutic frequencies and particular decibel levels, see Fig. 3.

So says the study “Solving The Cat’s Purr Mystery using Accelerometers,” Elizabeth von Muggenthaler and Bill Wright, Bruel and Kjaer Magazine, no. 1. 2003.

(Thanks to investigator Janice Ewing for bringing this to our attention.)

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 11 Republican and Democratic hopefuls (yes, several wrote more than one).

As I was trying to make sense of this dizzying array of reading choices in front of me this election season, I must admit that my eyes glazed over with familiar talk of audacious hope, living history, prayer, courage, higher ground, and leadership. So I did the only thing I could do: I boiled it all down to a few objective numbers. It turns out that these books collectively take up over 4,400 pages, and are priced at more than a nickel a page. But, as shown in the graph, the range in price per page across the candidates’ offerings is truly staggering. Here’s the graph:

It is no surprise that Senator Hillary Clinton is on the far left — along with Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Senator Barack Obama — at under 4 cents per page, while Senator John McCain and Governor Mitt Romney are more centrist at 6-7 cents per page. In contrast, Governors Mike Huckabee and Bill Richardson are the farthest to the right, at over 10 cents per page. Of course, the latter could be accused of flip-flopping; he has taken different positions on this particular issue, as his other book is priced towards the other end of the economic spectrum.

On the one hand, if price signals quality, a Huckabee versus Richardson election campaign may be in our future, as these candidates must have the most highly prized messages. On the other hand, Clinton and Giuliani may have priced their respective tomes in such a way as to garner more populist appeal, especially in less well-to-do parts of the country, where affordability of Presidential biographies is a pressing issue.

A little arithmetic sheds light on the critical choices we face as a nation. The difference between the most expensive candidate offering and the least on a per page basis is a little less than 8 cents. Assuming this is a harbinger of things to come in their respective Presidencies, it implies that for every billion pages of government publications, at stake may be as much as $80 million in differential costs to the taxpayer. When you realize just how many billions of pages of hearings, committees, codes, regulations, opinions, proposals, plans, and conferences are published by the US Government each year, you realize just how important the choice of President really is.

DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES: Their books
Hillary Rodham Clinton: “Living History,” Scribner, 567 pp., illustrated, paperback, $16

Barack Obama: “The Audacity of Hope,” Three Rivers, 375 pp., paperback, $14.95

John Edwards: “Four Trials,” Simon & Schuster, 237 pp., paperback, $13 (written with John Auchard)

Bill Richardson: (1) “Leading by Example: How We Can Inspire an Energy and Security Revolution,” Wiley, 246 pp., $25.95; (2) “Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life,” Plume, 374 pp., illustrated, paperback, $16 (written with Michael Ruby)

Dennis Kucinich: (1) “A Prayer for America,” Thunder’s Mouth, 141 pp., paperback, $11.95; (2) “The Courage to Survive,” Phoenix, 316 pp., $25.95

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES: Their books

Mike Huckabee: “From Hope to Higher Ground: Twelve STOPs to Restoring America’s Greatness,” Center Street, 196 pp., $19.99

John McCain: (1) “Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember,” Random House, 311 pp., paperback, $15.95 (written with Mark Salter); (2) “Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them,” Twelve, 456 pp., illustrated, $25.99 (written with Mark Salter)

Mitt Romney: “Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games,” Regnery, 396 pp., illustrated, $27.95 (written with Timothy Robinson)

Rudolph Giuliani: “Leadership,” Miramax, 432 pp., paperback, $15.95 (written with Ken Kurson)

Ron Paul: “A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce and Honest Friendship,” Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, 372 pp., paperback, $19.95

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 me, or by similar ones, Rosenberg has much to say about the general worldview that results. I have not ventured to say anything about Rosenberg?s proposal, which he calls Liberal Naturalism. Nor have I said anything about his account of causation, constructed to be with Liberal Naturalism. That, I suppose, must stand or fall in its own right; and its presentation might have been a separate book. I think that Rosenberg will not be surprised that he has failed to convince me. As he says, ?Reinventing nature is hard work.? A Place for Consciousness is no doubt only a first pass at the task.

So writes philosopher Thomas Polger in “A place for dogs and trees?,” his 20-page take at a few aspects of fellow philosopher Gregg Rosenberg‘s quarrelicious book.

Gregg Rosenberg, by the way, has own answer to the question “What do philosophers do?” They get hired to be consultants. Rosenberg writes: “I am currently managing research at the [Washington-D.C.-based consulting firm] Corporate Executive Board.”

Not only are philosophers conscious that they love to quarrel?they consciously love to quarrel about consciousness. A web page called “Online Papers in Consciousness” lists and links to many fine consciousness quarrels. Like all good quarrels, these can be enjoyed even by the casual passerby who chooses a quarrel at random and dips into it midstream. Here are dipping points for three of the many quarrels available for dipping into:

• Charles Birch (1999). Why I became a panexperientialist.
• Roberto Casati (2003). Qualia domesticated.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/32/47/PDF/ijn_00000057_00.pdf
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000057
• David Chalmers (online). What is it like to be a thermostat?

The special Reclassification/Renaming issue of the Annals of Improbable Research (vol 14, no 1, Jan-Feb 2008) is now online.