A replication (with Japanese-language speakers and English-language speakers) of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize-winning experiment (with only English-language speakers) about swearing and pain, described by one of the researchers, in The Conversation: Swearing helps us battle pain – no matter what language we curse in The new study is “Swearing as a response to pain: A […]
Tag: Japanese
Intimate exaltation in Japanese, in English
How does one come to understand the concept and role of intimate exaltation — especially intimate exaltation in Japanese — if one does not speak Japanese or live in Japan? One place to start: “Speech-style shifts and intimate exaltation in Japanese,” Yoko Hasegawa, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 269-284, […]
Goo Labs’ search engine for Kawaii, things that are cute
Japan, arguably the world’s epicentre of cuteness, has the word ‘Kawaii’ to refer to an entity’s degree of cuteness. With this in mind, researchers at Goo Labs developed an unusual internet search engine – one which attempted to rank results according to how cute they were. Details were provided in Chapter 12 of the 2012 […]
Dr. Nakamats, in Russian, at length
Nearly an hour of the Russian edition of the documentary film about 2005 Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr. Nakamats is online. Dr. Nakamats won his prize for having photographed and alylized every meal he consumed during a period of 34 years [a streak which he has since extended], which is but one of his many […]
New Thai translation of a Japanese Ig book
A book just published in Thailand is a translation (into Thai, from Japanese) of Ranai Kuga’s book (ISBN 978-4484082226) about the Ig Nobel Prizes. (We have heard of Kuga’s book, but have not actually seen a copy.) Here’s a rough machine-translation of a review of the newly published book (ISBN 9789744434371): Perhaps crazy idea to […]
Computer beats a top human in Japanese chess
Investigator Shoichi Fukayama alerts us to news in the ongoing battle between humans and computers. Reports from Japan say that for the first time a computer has defeated a top-rank shogi player. Shogi is a game related to chess, and believed by many players to be of greater difficulty. A network of 169 computers bested […]
“The Elements”, Lehrerized & Grayed in Japanese
Theo Gray and Tom Lehrer collaborated to produce this video of a Japanese version of Tom’s masterpiece song The Elements. Theo Gray was awarded the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry for gathering many elements of the periodic table, and assembling them into the form of a four-legged periodic table table. Tom Lehrer is Tom […]