Improbable Research

Although tickets for the Ig Nobel ceremony are almost sold out, there are a few “imperfect view” seats left. They’re not available through the Harvard Box Office web site, though — only in person or by phone 617-496-2222.

The French will swallow almost anything, so long as it’s surprising to see and delightful to taste. Jennifer J Davis explains why in a study called Masters of Disguise: French Cooks Between Art and Nature, 1651–1793. The 14-page report, replete with old drawings and few new photographs, is published in the journal Gastronomica.

“Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” Davis writes, “cooks engaged in a multitude of games in which one food masqueraded as another. Such games often played along the fault lines of alimentary taboos, as the cooked imitated the raw, the dead masqueraded as the living, and the injunctions of Catholic fasts were followed to the letter, if not the spirit, of the law.”

Religious fast days, especially, became opportunities for cooks to strut their ingeniously stuffed stuff. All things seemingly became possible….

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

Some electrical engineers prefer the new, computer-peripherals’-mechanical-action-generated version of the song ” Bohemian Rhapsody”.

(The performers: Atari 800XL as lead piano/organ sound; Texas Instruments TI-99/4a as lead guitar; 8 Inch Floppy Disk as Bass; 3.5 inch Harddrive as the gong; HP ScanJet 3C as vocalist, so to speak.)

Some still prefer the original Queen version, in which Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists member (and astronomer, and Queen’s lead guitarist) Brian May played a significant role.

“The ‘flying cow’ is the new unit of UFO mass,” points out the Lightbucket blog, elucidating a report that appeared in the British research journal The Sun under the headline “UFO hits wind turbine.”

The unit seems to have been first reported by Dale Vince on BBC Radio 4, January 8, 2009. In his words: “Something the size and shape or weight of a cow would probably do it.”

The September issue of mini-AIR just went out. Topics include:

Lots of Ig Nobel info; Directory of Cute and Disgusting Animal Cousins; Why Do Flamingos Stand on One Leg?; President’s Left Eyebrow Poet; Severed Gecko’s Tail Competition; Nailbreaks, Windward Passage (flaturia); etc.

Mel [pictured here] says, “It’s swell.”

(mini-AIR is the simplest way to keep informed about Improbable and Ig Nobel news and events. To have it emailed to you every month, just fill in the wee form.)

“Does substantia innominata projects to zona incerta? Well, probably…”

So writes investigator Benoit Girard in alerting us to this study:

“Evidence that Projections from Substantia Innominata to Zona Incerta and Mesencephalic Locomotor Region Contribute to Locomotor Activity,” G.J. Mogenson, et al., Brain Research, vol. 334, no. 1, May 13, 1985, pp. 65-76.