Regular readers of the Annals of Improbable Research are accustomed to seeing photos of the man known as Mel. Some find their thoughts dwell on Mel. They write us letters and letters and letters and letters. Here is a letter that arrived this week: The photos of Mel, the bearded man that appears so often […]
Month: September 2005
Crows over his hair
Ben Kenward of Oxford University and then of Uppsala University, has been known to place a hat atop his luxuriantly flowing hair, and place a crow atop that hat. Dr Kenward has just joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS).
Government dense document discovery
Earle Spamer has begun looking for especially dense government documents. He found one that has a special kind of density. Investigator Spamer writes: This document ["How Does POSSLQ Measure Up? Historical Estimates of Cohabitation," by Lynne M. Casper, Philip N. Cohen, and Tavia Simmons] is the current record-holder for an official government document with the […]
How to write a love letter
Joshua Lederman‘s masterful observational study "How to Write a Love Letter" appears in the September/October issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. Lederman is also the lead member of the band Los Diablos.
Ig book publication day (and Troy)
Today is the official publication day for our new book The Ig Nobel Prizes 2: An All-New Collection of the World’s Unlikeliest Research (ISBN 0525949127). Please spread the word! This book tells the stories, in glorious and inglorious detail, of a completely different heap of Ig Nobel Prize winners than appear in the book The […]
Bitingly Dull
Mathematics for Engineers, by Raymond W Dull, is still, 79 years after its first appearance, pure Dull. It is a very personal book. Dull confides, in the preface to the first edition, that "it was not his original intention to publish". Yes, he does refer to himself in the third person. And yes, he did […]
Bowlingual branches out to mobile phones
Bowlingual, the computer-driven automatic dog-to-human language translation device that earned an Ig Nobel Peace Prize for its inventors, is now available in a form that uses mobile phone technology.
Adventures of and with vacuums
It is possible to use a robotic vac to herd children, or so it is said. But there is unhappy news, too, in this general field of endeavor. A December 24, 2004 report in The Register carries the headline "Killer Hoover Attacks Scotsman," and tells the tale of a would-be killer Dyson. (Thanks to Genevieve […]
Hurricanes and pressured cookery
William M. Arkin of the Washington Post describes several reports prepared by the USA’s best-funded improbable research organization, the Department of Homeland Security. Arkin’s September 19, 2005 article summarizes the reports, and provides links to full copies: [They] published a "For Official Use Only" report How Terrorists Might Exploit a Hurricane and published here [in […]
Class of 2002 further adventures
Many of the co-winners of the 2002 Ig Nobel Economics Prize have managed to gain further attention since they were honored. Today, September 19, 2005, the news is bursting with reports, including this one from Bloomberg News, about a pair of those honorees: Ex-Tyco Chief Executive Kozlowski Sentenced to 8 to 25 Years Sept. 19 […]