mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
October 2020, issue number 2020-10. 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: Liars & Con Men — Now Released
03 Blue Men
04 Ig Nobel Stuff: The Lectures, the Radio Broadcast, and the Opera
05 Limerick Challenge: Blue Balls Cure Coming
06 Heavily Hopping Winner
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Snapping, Sandwich, Sluggo
08 Blue Balls, Yellow Balls, Green Balls
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: Liars & Con Men — Now Released
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 LIARS & CON MEN issue of the magazine is on the loose:
<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume26/v26i5/v26i5.php >
The next issue (vol 26, no. 6) will be a special IG NOBEL issue. That issue is in prep.
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 Blue Men
This month's maybe-random research item:
"A Case Report on the Strange Phenomenon That Turns Men Blue: Methemoglobinemia," G.K. Mahl, Industrial Medicine and Surgery, vol. 28, no. 1, January 1959, pp. 38-9.
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13610476/>
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04 Ig Nobel Stuff: The Lectures, the Radio Broadcast, and the Opera
Every year, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners give free public lectures in which they briefly explain, if they can, what that did and why they did it.
This year, thanks to the pandemic, The Ig Informal Lectures will, like the ceremony, happen online. The lectures will appear in November and December. We will announce the schedule soon, on the web site and also here in mini-AIR.
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This year's special Ig Nobel radio broadcast (also streamed online) on the "Science Friday" program: Friday, November 27, 2020.
<https://www.sciencefriday.com/>
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The opera "Dream, Little Cockroach," which premiered as part of the 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, can now be seen as a distinct (and distinctive) video:
<https://www.improbable.com/2020/10/15/the-opera-dream-little-cockroach-the-whole-video/>
* * *
A full report about the ceremony and the winners will nearly fill the November/December issue (vol. 26, no. 6)—this year's special IG NOBEL issue — of the magazine (the Annals of Improbable Research.
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05 Limerick Challenge: Blue Balls Cure Coming
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
"Blue Balls," Jonathan M. Chalett and Lewis T. Nerenberg, Pediatrics, vol. 108, no. 5, November 2001, p. 1233-4. <https://tinyurl.com/y6lkhqsz> The authors, responding to other doctors' reports about the condition, write:
"Drs Weinzimer and Thornton… 'fervently hope' for 'an end to this dreaded condition'; about this we can offer assurance—blue balls is real, and a cure is coming."
Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:
BLUE BALLS LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
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06 Heavily Hopping Winner
The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this patent:
"Effect of Frequency on Human Unipedal Hopping," G.P. Austin, D. Tiberio, and G.E. Garrett, Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 95, no. 3, part 1, December 2002, pp. 733-40. <https://tinyurl.com/y5lnf4gk>
INVESTIGATOR LESLIE ROSENBLOOD writes:
We asked ten test subjects to hop:
Normal, fast, slow, and then stop.
Did changing the speed
Help or impede
How often their ankles went "pop"?
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
My knees and my hips show no trace
Of hopping, no matter the pace.
On one leg, fast or slow,
However I go,
I quickly fall flat on my face.
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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Snapping, Sandwich, Sluggo
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG: <http://www.improbable.com/>:
* Ig Nobel Medical Education Prize Winner Continues His Lesson
* Person Authentication Using Finger Snapping
* Food for Thoughtful Energy: A Sandwich as a Triboelectric Nanogenerator
*…and much more
LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS)
<https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/>
New member:
Jost Migenda
PODCAST:
<https://www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/>:
Pocket-Sized #1036 "Ice Cream and Intense Scholars"
Pocket-Sized #1037 "Chernoff Faces"
Pocket-Sized #1038 "Ice Cream and Sluggo"
Pocket-Sized #1039 "The A-through-L of Social Dilemmas"
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 Blue Balls, Yellow Balls, Green Balls
"Ball Color, Eye Color, and a Reactive Motor Skill," P.J. Rowe and P. Evans, Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 79, no. 1, part 2, August 1994, pp. 671-74. <https://doi.org/10.2466%2Fpms.1994.79.1.671>
The authors report:
"Dark-eyed men performed better than other subjects and performance was better with blue balls than yellow or green balls."
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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
Ig Informal Lectures (online) —Nov & Dec (dates TBA)
Harvard Club of Cape Cod (online) —Nov 19, 2020
"Science Friday" Ig Nobel broadcast —Nov 27, 2020
Harvard Club of Merrimac (online) —Dec 3, 2020
Arisia. Boston —Jan 2021 (date TBA)
Israel Physics Society (online) —Jan 22, 2021
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.
To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to mini-AIR:
<http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/mini-air>
ARCHIVES: <http://improbable.com/airchives/miniair>
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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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