The January 2026 issue of mini-AIR, our teeny tiny free little e-newsletter of overflow detritus that did not fit in the magazine (Annals of Improbable Research), has just gone out. The issue contains info about research on the topic of “This and That.” It includes the winning entry in the competition to create a limerick […]
Category: Research News
Research — on any and all subjects — that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans. Do Humans Prefer Beautiful Chickens?
“Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans“, according to the title of the research study by Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist of Stockholm University, honored by the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for Interdisciplinary Research. That study was published in the journal Human Nature (vol. 13, no. 3, 2002, pp. 383-9.) Twenty-three years later, a Reuters video news […]
[Book review:] This Is Improbable
Midlogphase reviews my book (the book came out a decade ago) This is Improbable. Midlogphase says: This is a book that you shouldn’t read really fast. This is not a sit down page turner book. This is a book you should read very very slowly. “This is “Improbable”. [These are] things that will make you […]
The straight poop: “New study finds square feces may deliver information”
Some of the researchers who investigated the physics of why some wombats have cube-shaped poo [and who subsequently won a prize for having done that] have been pursuing the related question of “why”. The University of Georgia broadcast news of how they are faring: New study finds square feces may deliver information Most people have […]



