Ig Limericks: Levitating Frogs, Incompetence Unawareness

“Ig Nobel Limericks: Levitating Frogs, Incompetence Unawareness” is a featured revue article in the special Children issue (volume 27, number 5) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Read this article, free, on the web. Then, if these limericks, composed by the Improbable Limerick Laureate, Martin Eiger, inspire you, subscribe to the magazine, or buy […]

Limerick Challenge: His Perspicacity on Tick Paralysis

This month’s RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study: “The Perspicacity of Seymour Hadwen on Tick Paralysis — A Commentary,” M.W. Felz, Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, vol. 11 No. 2, 2000, pp. 113-121. The study’s author explains: “A commentary on a study of tick paralysis by Seymour Hadwen [pictured here, […]

Decisive-Regret-Under-Uncertainty Limerick Contest

This month’s research limerick contest: Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study: “Regret in Decision Making Under Uncertainty,” David E. Bell, Operations Research, vol. 30, no. 5, 1982, pp. 961-981.  The author, at Harvard University, reports: “After making a decision under uncertainty, a person may discover, on learning the relevant outcomes, that another alternative […]

Kevin, the singing biochemistry instructor: Gluconeogenesis

Dr. Kevin Ahern is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Oregon State University, US.  Dr. Ahern  Kevin has created a selection of “Wildly Popular Metabolic Melodies, Verses and Mildly Popular Limericks” Here is an example : a melody entitled ‘Gluconeogenesis’ Also see : Ahern, Kevin. “Song: I’m a Little Mitochondrion […]

The Winning Incompleteness & Unsolvable Halting Limerick

By request from several readers, here’s a reprint (from mini-AIR) of the winning entry for the Incompleteness & Unsolvable Halting Limerick Competition, The competition asked for a limerick to honor the study “What Does the Incompleteness Theorem Add to the Unsolvability of the Halting Problem?” Torkel Franzen, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3988, 2006, p. […]

Guinness bubble/widget followup: limerick

A followup to yesterday’s post about “Beer bubble appreciation in Limerick“: Martin Eiger, the Limerick laureate, points to a Technology Review article about the new Guinness Stout beer bubble study. Tech Review notes that the study authors, who are mathematicians at the University of Limerick, and opens with this headline: “Mathematicians Reinvent The Beer Widget […]

Elephant origin limerick almosts

Here are some runners-up in the Elephant Origin Limerick Competition, which asked for a limerick to honor the study “A Simple and Inexpensive Molecular Method for Sexing and Identification of the Forensic Samples of Elephant Origin,” Sandeep K. Gupta, Kumarasamy Thangaraj [pictured here], Lalji Singh, Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol. 51, no. 4, July 2006, […]

Mad honey runners-up

The winner of the Mad Honey Sex Limerick Competition will be announced soon, in the January issue of mini-AIR. The competition asked for a limerick to honor the study “Mad Honey Sex: Therapeutic Misadventures From an Ancient Biological Weapon,” Ahmet Demircan, et al., Annals of Emergency Medicine, 2009. Here are the runners-up: DON DAVIS: ‘kay, […]