mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
July 2020, issue number 2020-07. ISSN 1076-500X.
<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>
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Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
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01 TABLE OF CONTENTS
02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Small Animals After Big, Then Coffee
03 Unappealing Edibles
04 The Approaching 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
05 Limerick Challenge: Unappealing Species
06 Trust Rotter Winner
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Politician Obesity & National Corruption
08 Unappealing People
20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
31 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
32 — Contact Info (*)
33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.
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02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Small Animals After Big, Then Coffee
WHAT YOU ARE READING AT THIS MOMENT
is just our monthly newsletter, (mini-AIR).
This is overflow detritus from the actual magazine:
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).
The special SMALL ANIMALS issue of the magazine, tiptoeing in the footsteps of the special BIG ANIMALS issue (which bounded along in the mental footsteps of the special PSYCHOLOGY issue), has arrived:
<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume26/v26i3/v26i3.php>
The next issue, the special COFFEE, AND TEA issue, is being brewed.
Tables of Contents: <http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>
SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE,
or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!):
<https://gumroad.com/improbable>
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03 Unappealing Edibles
This month's random related research items:
"What is So Unappealing About Blue Food and Drink?" Charles Spence, International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, vol. 14, 2018. <https://tinyurl.com/y4h9l6nx> The author, who won an Ig Nobel Prize for earlier work involving the electronically modified sound of a potato chip, explains:
" 'natural' blue food and drink items are becoming an increasingly common sight in the grocery aisles and online due, in part, to this colour's ability to capture our attention in amongst the other more common food colours. This article highlights those situations/contexts in which blue is/isn’t an acceptable food colour, and how attitudes have changed over the decades, in part, due to the emergence of a number of naturally-sourced colouring agents."
Blue food also drew attention in 1992, when Ivette Bassa was awarded an Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize for her role in the crowning achievement of twentieth century chemistry, the synthesis of bright blue Jell-O.
<https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/winners/#ig1992>
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04 The Approaching 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
Favorite-Memory Videos — We asked several Ig Nobel Prize ceremony participants, organizers, and audience members, to tell us, every-so-briefly [in 30 seconds or less], their favorite personal Ig Nobel experience. We're putting each video on YouTube, and on our blog, and on the 2020 ceremony web page. Take a look at the first of these historic videos: <https://tinyurl.com/yapnz8gs>
The Ceremony — THE 30TH FIRST ANNUAL IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY
will happen entirely online, on September 17, 2020.
This year there will be special versions of the webcast in Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese, as well as in English.
The Lectures — The Ig Informal Lectures, in which the new Ig Nobel Prize winners will give brief public talks, will happen entirely online, possibly over a span of several days. We have not yet scheduled the date(s) for the lectures.
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05 Limerick Challenge: Unappealing Species
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing
limerick that encapsulates this study:
"Effects of Amusing Memes on Concern for Unappealing Species," Magdalena Lenda, Pjoter Skórka, Błażej Mazur, William Sutherland, Piotr Tryjanowski, Dawid Moroń, Erik Meijaard, Hugh P. Possingham, and Kerrie A. Wilson, Conservation Biology, epub 2020. <https://tinyurl.com/y46js3mu> (Thanks to Walter Berry for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at institutions in Australia, Poland, Brunei, and the USA, explain:
"We analyzed Polish people's interest in themed internet memes featuring the proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) and the consequences of this interest for conservation marketing…. Amusing internet memes spread by social media positively correlated with increasing interest in the unappealing species, such as proboscis monkey."
Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:
UNAPPEALING SPECIES LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
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06 Trust Rotter Winner
The judges have chosen a-winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this patent:
"Dimensions of the Rotter Trust Scale," Kenneth B. Stein, William F. Soskin, and Sheldon J. Korchin, Psychological Reports, vol. 35, no. 2, 1974, pp. 999-1004. <https://tinyurl.com/y724rveb>
INVESTIGATOR FRED BETHKE writes:
Three skeptics, each one a trust buster,
From Rotter are taking the luster.
His scale you can't trust,
Is their argument's thrust.
His sample base does not pass muster.
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
Clustering data's discussed.
As a reader, though, I am nonplussed.
Are there just three dimensions
Of misapprehensions?
That's why this commands my mistrust.
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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Politician Obesity & National Corruption
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG: <http://www.improbable.com/>:
* High Precision Glass Polishing with Ketchup
* Cormorants Rain Their Waste Upon Limos in Rotterdam
* Obesity of Politicians as Indicator of a Country’s Corruption
*…and much more
LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS)
<https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/>
PODCAST:
<https://www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/>:
Pocket-Sized #1018 "Centrifugal Chicken Shit"
Pocket-Sized #1019 "Hand-Clap Shape Sounds"
Pocket-Sized #1020 "Spin-Stretched Ant Neck"
Pocket-Sized #1021 "Rain, Walk, Run"
Pocket-Sized #1022 "Ice Cream & Termpaper Doug"
Pocket-Sized #1023 "Frozen Shirt of a Stranger"
Pocket-Sized #1024 "Surgery Grapefruit"
Pocket-Sized #1025 "German Sense of Humor"
Pocket-Sized #1026 "Swimming in Fat Metaphors"
FACEBOOK: <http://www.facebook.com/improbableresearch>
TWITTER: @ImprobResearch, @MarcAbrahams, #IgNobel
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/improbable_research/
PATREON: <www.patreon.com/ImprobableResearch>
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08 Unappealing People
"Are People More Risk-Taking in the Presence of the Opposite Sex?" Patrick McAlvanah, Journal of Economic Psychology, vol. 30, no. 2, 2009, pp. 136-146. <https://tinyurl.com/y48pmrm4> The author, at the Bureau of Economics, USA, explains:
"Both males and females viewing opposite sex photos displayed a significant increase in risk tolerance, whereas the control subjects exhibited no significant change. Surprisingly, the attractiveness of the photo had no effect; subjects viewing photographs of attractive opposite sex persons displayed similar results as those viewing photographs of unattractive people. Given this complete lack of any attractiveness effect, I combine subjects viewing either appealing versus unappealing people or cars into simply 'subjects viewing the opposite sex' or 'subjects viewing cars' for easier analysis."
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FIND (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.
SUBCRIBE TO THE ACTUAL (PDF) MAGAZINE!
<www.improbable.com/magazine/>
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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
30th First Annual Ig Nobel ceremony —Sep 17, 2020
Ig Informal Lectures —Dates TBA
Gothenburg, Sweden (online) —Oct 2, 2020
Harvard Club of Cape Cod (online) —Nov 19, 2020
2021 Ig Nobel EuroTour (we hope) —March-April 2021
For details and additional events, see
<http://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>
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30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine,
in PDF form.
It's packed with research that makes people laugh, then think.
<www.improbable.com/magazine/>
SUBSCRIPTIONS ($25, for six issues)
BACK ISSUES ($5 each)
(mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating appendix to the actual magazine.)
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31 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)
This newsletter, Mini-AIR, is just a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
EDITORIAL: <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: <subscriptions AT improbable.com>
Cambridge, MA, USA
Twitter: @ImprobResearch
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33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Nan Swift, Stephen Drew
PROOFREADER: Ambient Happenstance
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, Sheldon Glashow, Richard Roberts
Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the
(c) copyright 2020, Annals of Improbable Research
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