In the wake of the Ig Nobel Prize-winning studies about whether eating Italian pizza in Italy might lengthen life, comes a new study about Italians who eat chili peppers: “Chili Pepper Consumption and Mortality in Italian Adults,” Marialaura Bonaccio, Augusto Di Castelnuovo, Simona Costanzo, Emilia Ruggiero, Amalia De Curtis, Mariarosaria Persichillo, Claudio Tabolacci, Francesco Facchiano, […]
Tag: pizza
Learn how a swarm of maggots eats a pizza, in Washington
Olga Shishkov will discuss (and maybe demonstrate?) how a swarm of maggots eats a pizza, next Saturday night, February 16, at the Improbable Research session at the AAAS Annual Meeting, in Washington, DC. Science magazine introduces the research: “If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can watch 10,000 maggots demolish the above pizza in […]
A new symbol for the concept of “starving artist”
This artist announces a plan to preserve pizza slices, entombing each slice in a transparent small block of plastic. It is or is not art, depending on how one chooses to define art. The pizza is or is not, over the long span of time, pizza, depending on how one chooses to define pizza. The […]
The PIZZA & POPCORN issue of the Annals of Improbable Research
The special Pizza & Popcorn Questions issue (vol. 24, no. 1) of the Annals of Improbable Research is now available. The issue’s table of contents is online. And you can obtain, for a pittance, the full issue. The magazine is in splendid PDF form, packed with info yet lighter by far than a feather or a popcorn kernel. “The Evolution of Popcorn” […]
Pizza’s rat-sex study, and pizza rat
Pizza’s rat-sex study has been overshadowed by this video of a rat dragging a slice of pizza, which currently is entrancing the Internet: Pizza’s rat-sex study is: “Hexanic Maca extract improves rat sexual performance more effectively than methanolic and chloroformic Maca extracts,” A. F. G. Cicero, S. Piacente, A. Plaza, E. Sala, R. Arletti, and Cosimo […]
Professorial Pizza Deliveries
You can probably count on the fingers of fewer than two hands the number of university professors who, as part of their research, have worked for 18 months as pizza delivery operatives. But that is exactly what either* professor Patrick T. Kinkade or* professor Michael A. Katovich of the Sociology and Anthropology Dept. at Texas […]
Was the microwave vital to the burn? The cheese pie question.
Forensic fun puzzle of the day: To what extent, if any, was the microwave vital to the import of this medical report? “Thermal burn of palate caused by microwave heated cheese-pie: A case report,” Cases Journal, Panagiotis Kafas and Christos Stavrianos, vol.1 (2008): 191. The authors, at Aristotle University, Thessalonica, Greece, report: “A female patient, […]
PHD = pizza, sometimes
Sometimes, in some places, PhD means “doctor of philosophy”. Sometimes, in some places, PHD means pizza. One of those places, call of the time, is Malaysia, the base of operations for the company for which the letters P, H, and D stand for “Pizza Hut Delivery“. (Thanks to investigator Elaine Snell for bringing this to […]
Improbable Research in Washington Feb 19!
If you’ll be in or near Washington, DC on Feb 19, come to the Improbable Research show at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). See: Improbable Research editor Marc Abrahams Manuel Barbeito (Ig Nobel Prize winner for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists) in his […]
Pizza Will Save Your Life, Maybe
A series of Italian research studies suggest that eating pizza might do good things for a person’s health. These benefits show up, statistically speaking and seasoned with caveats, among people who eat pizza as pizza. The delightful statistico-medico-pizza effects do not happen so much, the researchers emphasise, for individuals who eat the pizza ingredients individually. […]