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The mini-Annals of Improbable Research
("mini-AIR")
November 2008, Issue number 2008-11. 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/mini2008-11.htm>
Archive
at <http://improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>
Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel,
AIR, the
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2008-11-01 TABLE OF CONTENTS
2008-11-02 Imminent Events
2008-11-03 What's New in the Magazine
2008-11-04 Random Question
2008-11-05 Salute to Smets
2008-11-06 Most-Absurd-Drug-Names — Selection #4
2008-11-07 Delicious-Guinea-Pigs Substitute
2008-11-08 That-Which-Lurketh-Between Competition
2008-11-09 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: No Rest for the Healthy
2008-11-10 TV Disturbs Them
2008-11-11 OTHER RECENT IMPROBABILITIES: Inertia,
Blowholes, Punk
2008-11-12 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Hell and van Loon
2008-11-13 Improbable Research Events
2008-11-14 -- How to Subscribe to AIR (*)
2008-11-15 -- Our Address (*)
2008-11-16 -- Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)
2008-11-17 -- 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
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2008-11-02 Imminent Events
SCIENCE
FRIDAY IG NOBEL BROADCAST NOV
28
A
specially edited recording of
the
2008 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.
Listen
on the radio or on the net:
<http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/listen/>
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2008-11-03 What's New in the Magazine
The November/December 2008 issue (vol. 14, no. 6) is the
special
Ig Nobel issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.
It's at the printer now, and will emerge soon.
Highlights include:
<> Many, many photos of the winners and the
ceremony.
<> The complete acceptance speeches.
<> Libretto of the mini-opera "Redundancy,
Again", and photos of
the premiere performance.
<> And much more.
Many back issues are online at
<http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>
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2008-11-04 Random Question
Question A:
What is your favorite random number?
Please write the number on a piece of paper.
Fold the paper lengthwise.
Now fold it again.
Now fold it again.
Now fold it again.
Put the paper your pocket.
Obtain a second piece of paper.
On it, write the answer to this question:
What is wrong with Question A?
Put the second paper your pocket, but do not fold it.
Please await further instructions.
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2008-11-05 Salute to Smets
If you believe in something, but you're not sure how (let
alone
how much) to count on your belief, Philippe Smets, of the
Universit Libre de Bruxelles, is your man.
Professor Smets wrote "Quantifying Beliefs by Belief
Functions:
An Axiomatic Justification," P. Smets, Proceedings
of the 13th
International Joint Conference on Artificial
Intelligence,
IJCAI'93, 1993, pp. 598-603.
And Professor Smets coined the word
"pignistic," which has
allowed a generation of party-goers (especially
party-goers who
go to parties planned to promote the propagation of the
phrase
"pignistic probabilities") the pleasure of
proposing that other
people proclaim these phrases:
"THE NECESSITY OF THE PIGNISTIC TRANSFORMATION"
"THE GENERALIZED PIGNISTIC TRANSFORMATION"
The phrases come from these two studies:
"Decision
Making in the TBM: The Necessity of
the
Pignistic Transformation," Philippe Smets,
International
Journal of Approximate Reasoning,
vol.
38, no. 2, February 2005,pp. 133-47.
"The
Generalized Pignistic Transformation," Jean Dezert,
Florentin Smarandache and Milan Daniel,
Proceedings of
the
Seventh International Conference on Information Fusion,
International
Society for Information Fusion,
Stockholm,
Sweden, 2004, pp. 384-91.
Peruse these and other papers at
<http://tinyurl.com/665phw>
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2008-11-06 Most-Absurd-Drug-Names — Selection #4
Still further submissions for the Most-Absurd-Drug-Name
Compendium:
Propain
http://www.propainmigraine.com/index.html
Submitted by investigator Frank Wales
Dextropropoxifeno
http://www.chemindustry.com/chemicals/781106.html
Submitted by investigator DrC. Adolfo L. Mndez Berhondo
More next month, maybe.
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2008-11-07 Delicious-Guinea-Pigs Substitute
The judges, themselves sated on Guinea pig, declare that
there is
no winner for last month's Delicious Guinea Pigs Limerick
Competition, which asked for a limerick to honor the
study
"Delicious Guinea Pigs: Seasonality Studies and the
Use of Fat in
the Pre-Columbian Andean Diet," Silvana A.
Rosenfeld, Quaternary
International, vol. 180, no. 1, March 2008, pp. 127-34.
<http://tinyurl.com/4ohdgr>.
But... the judges do declare an honorary winner —
INVESTIGATOR
CHIP VERES, who writes:
"I tried unsuccessfully to read the article
'Delicious guinea
pigs: Seasonality studies and the use of fat in the
pre-Columbian
Andean diet'. And I reply:
Guinea
Pigs are nifty
But
not very thrifty
To
read I must pay
Thirty-one
fifty"
But here's an offering from LIMERICK LAUREATE MARTIN
EIGER:
This paper explains to us why it
Is safe to skip carbs in your diet.
Do
not eat a rat,
Cat
or bat for your fat,
But a guinea pig. Go ahead, try it!
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2008-11-08 That-Which-Lurketh-Between Competition
Toe web bacilli are the subject of this month's limerick
competition. To enter, compose an original limerick that
illuminates the nature of this report:
"Toewebs
as a Source of Gram-Negative Bacilli,"
W.C.
Noble, et al., Journal of Hospital Infection, vol. 8,
November
1986, pp. 248-56.
<http://tinyurl.com/6a4pdy>
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 delicious issue of
the
Annals of Improbable Research. Send entries (one entry
per
entrant) to:
THAT-WHICH-LURKETH-BETWEEN
LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o
<marca AT chem2.harvard.edu>
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2008-11-09 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: No Rest for the Healthy
This month's specially selected study is:
"The Well-Made Bed: An Unappreciated Public Health
Risk," Robert
Patterson and Christopher Stewart-Patterson, Canadian
Medical
Association Journal, vol. 165, no. 12, December 11, 2001, pp.
1591-2. (Thanks to Francis Turner for bringing this to our
attention.)
<http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/165/12/1591.pdf>
Dr. Patterson is a general surgeon at Uintah Basin
Medical
Center, Roosevelt, Utah. Dr. Stewart-Patterson is a
general
practitioner in North Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada.
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2008-11-10 TV Disturbs Them
Although our new TV series is getting good reviews, the
dissenters can be most fun to read. The copies on New
Scientist's
YouTube channel, especially, have drawn some dismissive
comments
(though the viewers there overall rated the videos
four-to-five
stars out of five):
<http://tinyurl.com/6687dj>:
"yo,
that was so random"
"worst
video created"
The newest video features snippets of The Great Inertial
Debate
that was held in London. See it at
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJ-VKa9KYs>.
See all 12 of episodes (that we're release so far) at
<http://improbable.com/tv/>.
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2008-11-11 OTHER RECENT IMPROBABILITIES: Inertia,
Blowholes, Punk
Improbable TV collections:
<http://improbable.com/tv/>
<> "Inertia Debates"
<> "Burnt food, slipping socks"
<> "Subliminal, subliminal, shrew no
chew"
Blog items:
<http://improbable.com/>
<> Is Obama the Antichrist?
<> Statistician Prince and the mistress-money
survey
<> Sounds from, if not like, teeth
<> "Helicopters Collect Whale Snot from
Blowholes"
Newspaper columns:
<http://tinyurl.com/6o348d>
<> When punks grow old
<> How Woody the living hammer hit the spot
<> (L)Ode Upon a Creaking Chair
New Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists Members:
<http://tinyurl.com/25lmfb>
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2008-11-12 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Hell and van Loon
HELL ON THE HECK REACTION
"Palladium/Magnesium-Lanthanum Mixed Oxide Catalyst
in the Heck
Reaction," Agnieszka Cwik, Zoltn Hell, and Franois
Figueras,
Advanced Synthesis and Catalysis, vol. 348, nos. 4-5,
2006, pp.
523-30.
VAN LOON: HOW HIGH THE BIRD
"A Comparative Analysis of the Influence of Weather
on the Flight
Altitudes of Birds," Judy Shamoun-Baranes, Emiel van
Loon, Hans
van Gasteren, Jelmer van Belle, Willem Bouten and Luit
Buurma,
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol.
877, 2006,
pp. 47-61. (Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our
attention.)
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2008-11-13 Improbable Research Events
For details and additional events, see
<http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule>
"Science Friday" Ig Nobel radio special —
Nov 28, 2008
AAAS Meeting, Chicago —
Feb 13, 2009
Ig Nobel Tour of the UK —
Mar 6-15, 2009
SciFest Africa, Grahamstown, South Africa — Mar 25-26 2009
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2008-11-14 -- How to Subscribe to AIR (*)
The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year
magazine. (It's bigger and better than the little bits of
overflow material you've been reading in this
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<http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>.
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-----------------------------------------------------
2008-11-15 -- 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: subscriptions AT improbable.com
WEB SITE: <http://www.improbable.com>
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2008-11-16 -- Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)
Please distribute copies of mini-AIR (or excerpts!)
wherever
appropriate. The only limitations are: A) Please indicate
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AIR for commercial purposes.
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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
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2008-11-17 -- How to Receive mini-AIR, etc. (*)
What you are reading right now is mini-AIR. Mini-AIR is a
(free!)
tiny monthly *supplement* to the bi-monthly print
magazine.
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