Do you ever get an uncanny feeling that one of your toes is missing, despite the fact that they’re all there? You’re not alone. “To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first to document the [erroneous] experience of a ‘missing toe’ in healthy volunteers.” “Nineteen young adult participants underwent tactile stimulation […]
Month: April 2016
April 30 as final day for retiring the Zimbabwe $100-trillion-dollar bills
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe announced its official intention that April 30, 2016, will be the final day for paying anything—anything at all—to people who turned in the now-decommissioned $100,000,000,000,000 bills, $10,000,000,000,000 bills, $1,000,000,000,000 bills, and old bills of lower denominations. That announcement: “Demonetisation of the Zimbabwean Dollar — The demonetisation of the Zimbabwe dollar which was […]
The special SMELLY issue of the magazine is out!
The special SMELLY issue (vol. 22, no. 4) of the magazine (the Annals of Improbable Research) is now out! It’s bursting (as are all our issues) with carefully culled, improbable research snippets about everything, from anywhere, more or less. Click on the cover image, below, to see the issue’s table of contents and some of the articles. This is the second issue of […]
Leadership by a man with a big mouth (Podcast 61)
Does having a big mouth make a man more likely to become a political leader? A research study asked that very question. We discuss it, in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams —with dramatic readings by Daniel Rosenberg — tells about: The Big Man and his Big Mouth — “The […]