Can robots do stand-up? Or, more specifically, can a robot make manzai (Japanese stand-up comedy) seem funnier? Dr. Jonas Sjöbergh, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Knowledge Media Laboratory of Hokkaido University, Japan, has been working on the question since 2008. And, in association with colleague professor Kenji Araki, a paper was produced for LNAI 5447, […]
Year: 2013
Shakespearian delicious butchery terms
The Shakespeare’s England blog has a list of cooking/butchery words and phrases that involve certain animals. The list includes the following (and many others); I stumbled upon these rather charming 17th Century cooking terms today. To Carve is to Cut up a Dish of Meat, but according to the Meats, use these Terms for their […]
Neil Martin’s odd-article-title collection
Neil Martin, a distinguished member of the Improbable Research editorial board, has long collected oddly-titled academic studies. Many of the citations find their way into the Annals of Improbable Research. Now and then, Dr. Martin presents a few of his favorites to a specialized audience. One such collection appeared in the journal The Psychologist. The Psychologist‘s […]
Frogs: Trash exits via the bladder
New research about things that get under frogs’s skin, and what can happen to those things: “Removing the rubbish: frogs eliminate foreign objects from the body cavity through the bladder,” Christopher R. Tracy, Keith A. Christian, Lorrae J. McArthur and C. M. Gienger, Biology Letters. published online 2010. (Thanks to investigator Barry Pinshow for bringing […]