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The mini-Annals of Improbable Research
("mini-AIR")
April 2008, Issue number 2008-04. ISSN 1076-500X.
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A free newsletter of tidbits too tiny to fit in
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
This
issue at
<http://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/2008/mini2008-04.htm>
Archive
at <http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>
Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel,
AIR, the
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2008-04-01 TABLE OF CONTENTS
2008-04-02 Imminent Events
2008-04-03 What's New in the Magazine
2008-04-04 Sentence-of-Death: Kluge's Masterpiece
2008-04-05 Great Research Kluges
2008-04-06 Journals for Your Life Cycle
2008-04-07 Plea for Incompetence
2008-04-08 Pithy Thought of the Month
2008-04-09 Why Bedouin Robes Are Not Gray, Perhaps
2008-04-10 Shuffling/Hitching/Scooting/Sliding Poet
2008-04-11 Peat-Bog Man's Intestines Competition
2008-04-12 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Music Response in a Mental
Asylum
2008-04-13 BLOGLIGHTS: Promiscuous Streets, Clowns,
Colors
2008-04-14 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Sexual Addiction and
Overdenture
2008-04-15 Improbable Research Events
2008-04-16 -- How to Subscribe to AIR (*)
2008-04-17 -- Our Address (*)
2008-04-18 -- Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)
2008-04-19 -- How to Receive mini-AIR, etc. (*)
Items
marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.
mini-AIR
is
a
free monthly *e-supplement* to the print magazine
Annals
of Improbable Research
----------------------------------------------------------
2008-04-02 Imminent Events
CAMBRIDGE,
MA Mon, Apr 21, 7 pm. Free.
Skeptics
in the Pub, at Asgard, 350 Mass Ave.
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/470373
PHILADELPHIA Wed, Apr 23, noon. Free.
Chemical
Heritage Foundation - Brown Bag Lecture
315
Chestnut Street, 6th Floor Conference Room
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2008-04-03 What's New in the Magazine
The entire magazine -- the Annals of Improbable Research
-- is
now online for free for all. Open access, open access, we
repeat.
The March/April 2008 issue (vol. 14, no. 2) is a special
Writing
Research issue. Highlights include:
<> "How to Write 85,000 (or maybe 200,000)
Books"
<> "How to Write an Interdisciplinary Research
Paper: Planning
for Retirement by Solving Time Travel Paradoxes Using
Open Book
Management in Nearby Disk Galaxies," Eric Schulman,
Eric
Schulman, Eric Schulman, and Eric Schulman
<> "Hard Looks at Doctors' Handwriting"
It and many back issues are online at
<http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>
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2008-04-04 Sentence-of-Death: Kluge's Masterpiece
The Sentence-of-Death project grinds on. Investigator
Blanton
Daves writes to remind us that it has been ten years
since we
presented E. Kluge's classic sentence-of-death.
In tribute, we present it again. Investigator David Rind
alerted
us to the study "Health Information, Privacy,
Confidentiality and
Ethics," E.H. Kluge, International Journal of
Bio-Medical
Computing, vol. 35, supplement 1, 1994, pp. 23-7. The
study's
author, Eike-Henner Kluge, at the University of Victoria,
Canada,
begins his abstract with this sentence-of-death:
"Electronic patient records are becoming tologically
reified
entities that play the role of epistemic patient
analogues in
information space."
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2008-04-05 Great Research Kluges
Here are pointers to some exploits by other great Kluges
of the first
type:
"The mere fact that so distinguished a scholar as
Professor Kluge could
edit a practically unaltered version of a Chaucer Grammar
and
Prosody..." <http://tinyurl.com/3nq6kz>
"Professor Kluge has confidence in
cladograms..."
<http://tinyurl.com/45wn3t>
<Professor Kluge has served as editor of the German
literature journal
Monatshefte..." <http://tinyurl.com/45z3mc>
<Professor Kluge has written a beautifully written and
insightful look
at the educational process at a small liberal arts
college...>
<http://tinyurl.com/3v8cuc>
"Professor Kluge will visit MSL on Tuesday, 2
September, to discuss a
possible collaboration in the future accelerator
project..."
<http://tinyurl.com/4om2vd>
"Professor Kluge prescribes a quantity of Epsom
salts..."
<http://tinyurl.com/4bsx6f>
Kluge is of course not only a noble name, but also a
noble, and perhaps
unrelated, word. One of the word's definitions, put (or
perhaps
repeated?) into words by celebrity hacker Eric Raymond
<http://tinyurl.com/6gqclf>, is:
"A clever programming trick
intended to solve a particular nasty case
in an expedient, if not clear, manner.
Often used to repair bugs."
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2008-04-06 Journals for Your Life Cycle
Reto Schneider, author of the book Das Buch der
VerrŸckten
Experimente, compiled a list of journals that follow you
through
life:
ÇThe Birth GazetteÈ
ÇGifted Child QuarterlyÈ
ÇJournal of Child PsychotherapyÈ
ÇChild and Adolescent Psychopharmacology NewsÈ
ÇJournal of AdolescenceÈ
ÇJournal of Drug EducationÈ
ÇJournal of Marriage and FamilyÈ
ÇJournal of Happiness StudiesÈ
ÇJournal of Marital and Family TherapyÈ
ÇHeadache QuarterlyÈ
ÇJournal of Worry ResearchÈ
ÇJournal of Divorce & RemarriageÈ
ÇHealthy Weight JournalÈ
ÇAgeing InternationalÈ
ÇContemporary GerontologyÈ
ÇJournal of Alzheimer's DiseaseÈ
ÇArchives of Suicide ResearchÈ
ÇJournal of Near-Death StudiesÈ
ÇDeath StudiesÈ
More of Schneider's work is at
<http://www.verrueckte-experimente.de/>
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2008-04-07 Plea for Incompetence
You may have missed our plea for incompetence —
specifically for
social scientists to reap and study the rare bounty
that's
available right now. The entire tract is at
<http://improbable.com/2008/03/23/social-scientists-alert-gather-that-data/>.
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2008-04-08 Pithy Thought of the Month
"That we are smarter than algae is a given. Whether
we are wiser
remains an open question."
—Robert Frenay, in the book Pulse, page 440.
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2008-04-09 Why Bedouin Robes Are Not Gray, Perhaps
Investigator Mike Adams writes, about the report
"Why Do Bedouins
Wear Black Robes":
***
Many years ago I heard Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, famous for
his work
on adaptations to desert conditions, talk about this. He
said
that he finally asked the Bedouin why they used black
wool. Their
answer was 'all of our goats are black'. So, if the story
is
true, they didn't see the decision as one of choice.
***
Note: He was referring to:
<http://improbable.com/2006/08/17/guardian-column-27/>
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2008-04-10 Shuffling/Hitching/Scooting/Sliding Poet
The judges have chosen a winner for last month's
Shuffling/Hitching/Scooting/Sliding Limerick Competition,
which
asked for a limerick to honor the study "Shuffling,
Hitching,
Scooting or Sliding: Some Observations in 30 Otherwise
Normal
Children," R. Robson, Developmental Medicine and
Child Neurology,
vol. 12, 1970, pp. 608–17.
The winner and her limerick are:
INVESTIGATOR ALANNA COCTOKIN:
Their normal behavior aside,
They scoot and they shuffle or slide.
Whenever they swerved,
Doc
Robson observed
Who moved, and with what kind of stride.
AND HERE IS THE ASSESSMENT FROM LIMERICK LAUREATE MARTIN
EIGER:
The kids in this short publication
Are normal, save one aberration.
They
shuffle and hitch,
Scoot
and slide, all of which
Subjects them to some observation.
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2008-04-11 Peat-Bog Man's Intestines Competition
Peat-Bog Man's intestines are the subject of this month's
limerick competition. To enter, compose an original
limerick that
illuminates the nature of this report:
*
* *
"The Intestines of a More Than 2000 Years Old
Peat-Bog Man:
Microscopy, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and
14C-dating," Hans
St¿dkilde-J¿rgensena, Niels Otto Jacobsenb, Esbern
Warnckec and
Jan Heinemeierd, Journal of Archaeological Science, vol.
35, no.
3, March 2008, pp. 530-4.
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2007.05.010>
(Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.)
The
authors, at Aarhus University, report:
"The intestines of Grauballe Man, who is a 2400-old
late Iron Age
body found in a raised bog in the central part of
Jutland,
Denmark, was examined by microscopy and magnetic
resonance
imaging. Plant roots found in the tissue were radiocarbon
dated
by AMS.... The low signal spots observed by MRI turned
out to be
formed by plant roots penetrating the tissue. AMS
14C-dating of
these indicated that penetration appeared not more than
200 years
after the body was laid in the bog."
*
* *
RULES: Please make sure your rhymes actually do, and that
your
poem is in classic, trips-off-the-tongue limerick form.
PRIZE: The winning poet will receive (if we manage to
send it to
the correct address) a free, possibly peaty issue of the
Annals
of Improbable Research. Send entries (one entry per
entrant) to:
PEAT-BOG
MAN'S INTESTINE LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o
<marca AT chem2.harvard.edu>
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2008-04-12 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Music Response in a Mental
Asylum
This month's specially selected study is:
"A Comparison of the Effects of Hard Rock and Easy
Listening on
the Frequency of Observed Inappropriate Behaviors:
Control of
Environmental Antecedents in a Large Public Area,"
Clarke S.
Harris, Richard J. Bradley and Sharon K. Titus, Journal
of Music
Therapy, vol. 29,
no. 1, Spring 1992, pp. 6-17. (Thanks to Jim
Cowdery for bringing this to our attention.) The authors
explain
that their report:
"Compares the inappropriate behavior of clients in
an open
courtyard at a state mental hospital when hard rock and
rap music
were played (21 days), followed by easy listening and
country
music (21 days).... More inappropriate behavior was
observed when
hard rock and rap music were played than when easy
listening and
country western music were played."
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2008-04-13 BLOGLIGHTS: Promiscuous Streets, Clowns, Colors
Here are some recent topics in our blog:
<> The promiscuous streets of Edinburgh
<> Discarded underwear + paper production =
literacy
<> Judgment on clowns
<> The truth behind the Bozo Van
<> Calculator for the incalculatable
and some from the newspaper column in The Guardian:
<> The Colours of Indian Bureaucracy
<> The promiscuous streets of Edinburgh
<> Wassersuggiana (parts 1 and 2)
...
and others
Read
the blog
every
day at <http://www.improbable.com>
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2008-04-14 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Sexual Addiction and
Overdenture
LOVE YOUR WORK
"It's a Wonderful Profession: What the Journal
Contributes,"
David L. Delmonico, Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity,
vol. 10,
no. 4, October-December 2003, pp. 223-4.
HUM ON SPARK-EROSION OVERDENTURE
"Implants and the Maxillary Spark-Erosion
Overdenture," S.K. Hum,
Oral Health, vol. 84, no. 11, November 1994, pp. 9-12.
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2008-04-15 Improbable Research Events
For details and additional events, see
<http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule>
SKEPTICS IN THE PUB, CAMBRIDGE, MA -- APR 21, 2008
CHEMICAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION, PHILADELPHIA -APR 23, 2008
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MASS SPECTROMETRY (ASMS) ANNUAL
CONFERENCE,
DENVER --
JUN 1, 2008
CHELTENHAM SCIENCE FESTIVAL, UK -- JUN 7, 2008
ALPBACH TECHNOLOGY FORUM, AUSTRIA -- AUG 21-23, 2008
IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY --
OCT 2, 2008
IG INFORMAL LECTURES --
OCT 4, 2008
AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY, DAYTON, OHIO OCT 10, 2008
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2008-04-16 -- How to Subscribe to AIR (*)
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-----------------------------------------------------
2008-04-17 -- Our Address (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
PO Box 380853, Cambridge, MA 02238 USA
617-491-4437 FAX:617-661-0927
EDITORIAL: marca AT chem2.harvard.edu
SUBSCRIPTIONS: air AT improbable.com
WEB SITE: <http://www.improbable.com>
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2008-04-18 -- Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)
Please distribute copies of mini-AIR (or excerpts!)
wherever
appropriate. The only limitations are: A) Please indicate
that
the material comes from mini-AIR. B) You may NOT
distribute mini-
AIR for commercial purposes.
-------------
mini-AIRheads -------------
EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
MINI-PROOFREADER AND PICKER OF NITS (before we introduce
the last
few at the last moment): Wendy Mattson
COMMUTATIVE EDITOR: Stanley Eigen
ASSOCIATIVE EDITOR: Mark Dionne
PSYCHOLOGY EDITOR: Robin Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos,
Ernest
Ersatz, S. Drew
MAITRE DE COMPUTATION: Jerry Lotto
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach,
Sheldon
Glashow, William Lipscomb, Richard Roberts
(c) copyright 2008, Annals of Improbable Research
-----------------------------------------------------
2008-04-19 -- How to Receive mini-AIR, etc. (*)
What you are reading right now is mini-AIR. Mini-AIR is a
(free!)
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