mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
November 2022, issue number 2022-11. ISSN 1076-500X.
<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>
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Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
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01 TABLE OF CONTENTS
02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: The Ig Nobel Issue
03 Bureaucratic Anxiety
04 Ig in Vienna (and online)
05 Limerick Challenge: Bureaucracy and Pencil Sharpener
06 Slanted Question Winner
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Reversal, Handed Hobbies, Savage Mozart
08 Bureaucratic Bounded Emotionality
20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
31 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
32 — Contact Info (*)
33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.
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02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: The Ig Nobel Issue
What you are reading at the moment (mini-AIR)
is overflow detritus from
the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).
As the world turns, so does the special IG NOBEL issue (vol. 28, no. 6) of the magazine, waiting for you to read it and — if you are bold —to subscribe. See the table of contents and selected articles at:
<https://improbable.com/publications/magazine/annals-of-improbable-research-nov-dec-vol-28-number-6/>
SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE,
or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!):
<https://gumroad.com/improbable>
Tables of Contents: <http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>
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03 Bureaucratic Anxiety
This month's Haphazardly-Selected Study [HSS] of the month is:
"The Social Character of Bureaucracy: Anxiety and Ritualistic Defense," Michael A. Diamond, Political Psychology, 1985, pp. 663-679.
<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Diamond-10/publication/277481329_The_Social_Character_of_Bureaucracy_Anxiety_and_Ritualistic_Defense/links/5ce0711692851c4eabace7f9/The-Social-Character-of-Bureaucracy-Anxiety-and-Ritualistic-Defense.pdf>
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04 Ig in Vienna (and online)
The Heinz Oberhummer Award is for “outstanding scientific communication”. On November 24, 2022 it will be awarded to the Ig Nobel Prize, in an event in Vienna, Austria. Marc Abrahams and Ig Nobel Prize winners Lisa Oberzaucher, David Hu, Sabine Begall, and Minna Lyons will participate in the ceremony, which will be webcast live.
Details: <https://oberhummeraward.at/>
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05 Limerick Challenge: Bureaucracy and Pencil Sharpener
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
"On the Malaise and Menace of a Pencil Sharpener: Editing Emotional Subjectivity from Objective Reality," Vincent Bohlinger, Short Film Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, April 2015, pp. 45-48. <https://doi.org/10.1386/sfs.5.1.45_1> The author writes:
"Two shots of a pencil being sharpened (Shots 11 and 13) help to convey a sense of bureaucratic malaise and menace. This article focuses primarily on Shots 10–14 in order to demonstrate how the film's direct cinema-style editing gives added meaning to an otherwise seemingly objective, mundane, quotidian office activity."
Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:
BUREAUCRACY SHARPENER LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
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06 Slanted Question Winner
The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:
"To Tilt or Not to Tilt?" D.F. Yankelevitz, Radiology, vol. 191, no. 2, May 1994, p. 585. <https://doi.org/10.1148/radiology.191.2.585-a>
Winning limerickicist WENZ SACRAMENTO writes:
If patiently ponder thou wilt
Just how much your patents should tilt,
Be very inclined
To please keep in mind
The floor onto which they'd be spilt.
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
Stern has suggested a path
That aroused Yankelevitz's wrath.
The first way is better.
The one in this letter
Won't work. It's too hard. It has math.
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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Reversal, Handed Hobbies, Savage Mozart
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG: <http://www.improbable.com/>:
* How to reverse the apparent meaning of a press release
* Handedness and hobby preference in Greece
* Watch Glenn Gould savage Mozart
*…and much more
WEEKLY COLUMN IN NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE:
<https://www.newscientist.com/author/marc-abrahams/>
LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS):
<https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/>
PODCAST:
<https://www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/>
FACEBOOK: <http://www.facebook.com/improbableresearch>
TWITTER: @ImprobResearch, @MarcAbrahams, #IgNobel
INSTAGRAM: <https://www.instagram.com/improbable_research/>
PATREON: <www.patreon.com/ImprobableResearch>
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08 Bureaucratic Bounded Emotionality
This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Study [OHSS] of the month:
"An Alternative to Bureaucratic Impersonality and Emotional Labor: Bounded Emotionality at The Body Shop," Joanne Martin, Kathleen Knopoff and Christine Beckman, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 2, June 1998, pp. 429-469. <https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.2307/2393858>
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TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.
SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!
<www.improbable.com/magazine/>
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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
Ig Nobel Prizes Exhibition, Osaka, Japan Oct 1-Nov 13, 2022
Ig Informal Lectures (online) Nov & Dec, 2022
Heinz Oberhummer Ceremony, Vienna, Austria Nov 24, 2022
"Science Friday" Ig Nobel radio broadcast Nov 25, 2022
Imperial College Healthcare, London, UK Dec 14, 2022
Arisia, Boston, USA Jan 2023
AAAS Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, USA Feb 2023
Ig Nobel Euro (and Brexitannia) Tour March-April, 2023
American Chemical Society, San Francisco, USA August 15, 2023
[All live events in 2022 and 2023 are subject to pandemical constraints and adventures.]
For details and additional events, see
<http://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>
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30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine,
in PDF form.
It's packed with research that makes people laugh, then think.
<www.improbable.com/magazine/>
SUBSCRIPTIONS ($25, for six issues)
BACK ISSUES ($5 each)
(mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating appendix to the actual magazine.)
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31 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)
This newsletter, Mini-AIR, is just a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to mini-AIR, see the links at the end of this email.
ARCHIVES: <https://improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/>
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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
EDITORIAL: <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: <subscriptions AT improbable.com>
Cambridge, MA, USA
Twitter: @ImprobResearch
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33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Nan Swift, Stephen Drew
PROOFREADER: Ambient Happenstance
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, Sheldon Glashow, Richard Roberts
Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the
(c) copyright 2022, Annals of Improbable Research
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