Improbable Research

The Mar/Apr 2009 issue (vol. 15, no. 2) of the magazine (the Annals of Improbable Research) just went out. It’s a special Navel Lint issue, with research reports about navel lint, The Okajima / Fujinami navel lint invention; the 374-word oath; Life and De’Eath; the coming and going of cello scrotum; Guéguen and the goad of small things; and more. Click on the magazine cover (below) to:

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Mel (right) says it’s swell.

Mathematics teaching has been cocked up – well and properly and officially – for a good long while, thanks to Edward Cocker and his amply-titled textbook Cocker’s Arithmetick: Being a Plain and Familiar Method Suitable to the Meanest Capacity for the Full Understanding of That Incomparable Art, As It Is Now Taught by the Ablest School-Masters in City and Country.

The book, published in 1667, and later reprinted in more than 100 editions, was a standard in British grammar schools for several generations. Foreign schoolteachers also took Cocker to their bosom.

The 34-word title exemplifies the book’s approach to explaining things clearly. One could (although the author would probably not) sum it up in three words: don’t be terse….

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

The Boston Phoenix has made Saturday’s event an “Editor’s Pick”, saying:

Saturday, May 02, 2009
Improbable Research Cabaret 2009
Central Square Theater

If the thought of blowing tax dollars on grizzly-bear DNA was enough to horrify John McCain, his irritable ticker would no doubt explode were he to attend the Improbable Research Cabaret. One of the many nerdy delights on tap for the Cambridge Science Festival, the IRC wrangles a gaggle of Ig Nobel Prize winners to defend such dubious studies as the prophylactic effects of Coca-Cola, the human aversion to nails on a chalkboard, and the physics behind wrinkly sheets. Test-tubular bliss awaits at the Central Square Theater, 450 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 3 pm | $35; $20 for students | 617.576.9278 x 208 or http://www.centralsquaretheater.org

A patented brassiere that converts into a gas mask — actually into a pair of gas masks — could conceivably aid the sudden Mexican and worldwide defense against swine flu. The top two images here, reproduced form the patent, show the device deployed in each of its two modes. The third image shows a modified Mexican 20-peso bill that is being circulated on the Internet as a tribute to the battered Mexican and world economy and to the sudden desperate fight against the spread of swine flu. As described in AIR 14-3:

U.S. patent #7255627 was granted to Elena N. Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois, and Raphael C. Lee and Sandra Marijan of Chicago on August 14, 2007 for an “Garment device convertible to one or more facemasks.” Their intent, they say, is “to provide a garment which is operable to be converted into a facemask” and “to increase accessibility to facemasks.”

This is:

“a garment device which converts into one or more facemasks. In one embodiment, the garment device is a bra or a brassiere garment. The bra has two cups…. The inner portions of the cups are disconnectable, and the outer portions of the cups are disconnectable. As such, the bra is separable into two halves. Each halve is securable to a user’s face to form a facemask.”

(Thanks to investigator Estrella Burgos for bringing the 20-peso note to our attention.)

THE DREAD TOMATO ADDICTION
by Mark Clifton

This essay originally appeared in the February 1958 edition of Astounding. The dates in this version have been modified (all dates plus 50 years).

Ninety-two point four per cent of juvenile delinquents have eaten tomatoes. Eighty-seven point one per cent of the adult criminals in penitentiaries throughout
the United States have eaten tomatoes.

Informers reliably inform that of all known American Communists ninety-two point three percent have eaten tomatoes. Eighty-four per cent of all people killed in automobile accidents during the year 2004 had eaten tomatoes.

Those who object to singling out specific groups for statistical proofs require measurements within in the total. Of those people born before the year 1850, regardless of race, color, creed or caste, and known to have eaten tomatoes, there has been one hundred per cent mortality! …

So begins an essay originally published in 1958. (Thanks to Dan Eastwood for bringing it to our attention. Eastwood named his blog in honor of the essay.)

If you have any questions as to how or whether to use Coca-Cola for birth control, this is your chance to ask someone who really knows.

[Update In Response To Questions From Several Individuals: No, Coca-Cola is not sponsoring this event.]

This Saturday, May 2nd, will see the very first Improbable Research Cabaret, part of the Cambridge Science Festival.

Featuring Marc Abrahams, Ig Nobel Prize winners Lynn Halpern (why people dislike the sound of fingernails on a blackboard), and (Deborah J. Anderson (Is Coca-Cola an effective spermicide?). Also featuring Studmuffins of Science Calendar creator Karen Hopkin will explain why astrology is just as reliable for bacteria as it is for humans, Improbable Webmaster Julia Lunetta performing songs from the Ig Nobel Operas accompanied by Neara Russell, the Performing Scientists from Harvard and MIT. Illumination will be provided by the Human Spotlights. Speeches will be kept to promptitude thanks to Miss Sweetie Poo.

The Cabaret will be doing double duty — It’s a festival event, and also a fundraiser for the Central Square Theater, Greater Boston’s newest theatrical arts center in the heart of Central Square. Tickets are $35 for adults, and $20 for students, and can be purchased online, or reserved by contacting KC Forcier at (617) 576-9278 x208, or kcf@centralsquaretheater.org. Tickets include post-performance reception with Cabaret scientists.