“A Mordell-Weil Group of Rank 8, and a Subgroup of Finite Index,” Charles F. Schwartz, Nagoya Math Journal, vol. 93, 1984, pp. 17-26. (Thanks to Rodrigo Trevino and Don Troop for bringing this to our attention.) The author, who is at Rider College in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, makes reference to the following paper, which was […]
Category: Boys Will Be Boys
Research — that makes people LAUGH, then THINK — by and for teenage boys of all ages and genders.
Improbable Research TV episode 102
Here’s episode 102 (“Jacksonization, bomb bay door, duck”) of the Improbable Research TV series. To see it, click on the image at right, and you will be whisked to YouTube (where you can subscribe, if you like, to the Improbable Research channel). Improbable TV can also be seen on MySpace and elsewhere. These are three-minute […]
The first Improbable Research TV episode
Today we launch the Improbable Research TV series. These are three-minute videos about research that makes people laugh, then makes them think. Each collection – each episode – is composed of bits and pieces and people from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, from Ig Nobel Prize lectures and ceremonies and other live events, and […]
Race for a Little Definition
?Should the Definition of Micropenis Vary According to Ethnicity?? Pik Shun Cheng and Jean-Pierre Chanoine, Hormone Research, vol. 55, no. 6, 2001, pp. 278?81. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000050013). (Thanks to Len Finegold for bringing this to ur attention.) The authors, who are at University of British Columbia, explain how they explored the question: We determined whether the existing […]
Size and the Poet
?A Penis-shortening Device Described by the 13th Century Poet Rumi,? C.W. Moeliker, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36(6): 767, December 2007. (http://www.springerlink.com/content/r647773642352571) (Note: The author won the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize for a study, unrelated to this subject, involving homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.) (That?s an excerpt from the article ?Boys Will Be Boys,? […]
Boys will be boys
The “Boys Will Be Boys” column in the March/April 2005 issue of the magazine presents another health collection of research by and for adolescent males of all ages. One of the highlights this time is a splendid whopping new survey of colorectal foreign objects that appeared, more or less serendipitously, in a hospital in South […]
Egrets: I’ve Had a Few
“Promiscuity in the Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis),” is one of the featured citations in the most recent “Boys Will be Boys” column. N.G. McKilligan’s egret-filled research report was published in the journal The Auk, vol. 107, no. 2, April 1990, pp. 334-41.