Improbable Research

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

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 things that happen in your body during fetus-hood, childhood and adolescence. These many things happen at various times, in various ways. 2. Each of these hormones has many different effects. Scientists have noticed some of these effects, and understand a few of them at least a little bit. 3. Testosterone is one of the many hormones. 4. Maybe testosterone somehow, at some time, affects how long various fingers grow. 5. Maybe the relative lengths of someone’s fingers tells something about how much testosterone was in the body at some point early in their life. 6. Maybe the amount of testosterone in someone’s body at some point early in their life affects lots of other things.

This simple idea is often credited to Dr. John Manning of the University of Liverpool. Dr. Manning is now one of the world’s great finger research celebrities (see “Finger Celebrities” elsewhere in this issue). The rest of this article is a too-quick look at what researchers have done with this idea, and at some other finger research.

That’s an excerpt from the article “The Meaning of the Finger,” published in AIR 13:5.

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 this blog post, and linked newspaper story in the December 14, 2007 Honolulu Advertiser), a few Maui residents have developed a prototype Barf-o-Meter Index so that passengers might have a way to gauge whether they should bring lots of Dramamine with them, wear old clothes, etc.

The Index was developed principally by Brad Parsons and Dick Mayer of Maui, based on volunteer reports and news articles. Source data is from a National Weather Service forecast.

Here is the index:

BARF-o-METER INDEX

COLOR PUKE INDEX Sustained Wave
CODE PROSPECT (Wind + Wind Height
Wave x 4) (KNOTS) (FEET)

Level 1 - White Possible Puking 0 to 24 0 to 12 knots 0 to 2.5 ft

Level 2 - Yellow Scattered Puking 25 to 36 13 to 16 knots 3 to
————————————————————————————–
Level 3 - Orange Probable Puking 37 to 53 17 to 21 knots 5 to 7.5 ft

Level 4 - Red Definite Puking 54 to 85 22 to 25 knots 8 to 14.5 ft

Level 5 - Purple Widespread Puking 86 to 114 26 to 34 knots 15 to 19.5 ft

————————————————————————————–
Level 6 - Black Guaranteed Puking 115 + 35 + 20 ft +
Unsafe Conditions
and/or Not Operating

(NOTE: The Beaufort Scale, which relates wind speed to sea surface conditions, provided a scaffold upon which this new scale could be constructed.)

UPDATE Feb 11, 2008: Investigator Brad Parsons reports the existence of (1) a refined version of the scale and (2) a video of the bouncing ferry that inspired it all.

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, after receiving a letter on January 3 that was sent on December 20 as priority mail, calculated that a snail would have made it even faster to his home than the letter. Daily Gazeta Wyborcza said Michal Szybalski calculated that it took 294 hours for the letter to arrive at his home. He also said the distance between his home and the sender was 11.1 kilometres. Given the distance and the time, the speed of the letter was 0.03775 kilometres per hour. Szybalski calculated that a garden snail travels at around 0.048 kilometres per hour.

The slug speed record was published in the July/August 2005 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research, in a research report called Sluggish Data Transport Is Faster Than ADSL. The authors say:

We describe an experiment in which a Giant African Snail, acting as a data transfer agent, exceeded all known “lastmile” communications technologies in terms of bit-per-second performance, adding to the many paradoxes of broadband communications. We discuss the unique motivational and guidance systems necessary to facilitate snail-based data transport, and observe with satisfaction that in a society that worships the fittest, fastest, and furtherest, the meek and the slow can sometimes outperform all known competitors, giving rise to the new and exciting field of sluggish data networks.

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 park features belt whippings, KGB interrogations

Mickey Mouse, roller coasters, and cotton candy typify the average theme park. But in one Lithuanian town, those amenities are exchanged for belt whippings and some good old fashioned KGB interrogation.

It’s called “Gulag tourism.” And Grutas Park offers visitors a journey back to 1984 to remind citizens what life was like under Soviet rule. Organizers believe that for those old enough to remember life in the Soviet Union, visiting the park can be therapeutic, filled with old memorabilia and humor….

After an amiable introduction, visitors are quickly transported back 25 years. They are ordered to stop smiling or thinking and are chased through an elaborate labyrinth of corridors. Any misstep can result in a violent encounter with angry KGB agents. All of the activity lasts two hours, costs more than 35 Euros, and takes place inside a bunker located in the woods.

(Thanks to investigator Julia Lunetta for bringing this to our attention.)