mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
November 2023, issue number 2023-11. ISSN 1076-500X.
improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/
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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 Quality Sweating Fad
04 Ig Nobel on the Radio in the US, and Face-to-Face in Tokyo
05 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Management Fads
06 Gobbledygook Limerick Winners
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Taste, Fan, Disk
08 Conflicting Fads
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.
What you are reading at the moment (mini-AIR) is overflow detritus from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).
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02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: The Ig Nobel Issue
The special IG NOBEL issue (vol. 29, no. 6) of the magazine has been sent to subscribers. The table of contents and selected articles are at:
https://improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-november-december-2023-vol-29-number-6/
The special Riddles & Puzzles issue (vol. 30, no. 1) is in prep.
SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!): gumroad.com/improbable
Tables of Contents: improbable.com/magazine-2/
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03 Quality Sweating Fad
This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:
Managing Quality Fads: How American Business Learned to Play the Quality Game, Robert E. Cole, Oxford University Press on Demand, 1999.
www.google.com/books/edition/Managing_Quality_Fads/nlvnCwAAQBAJ
One concept discussed in the book is called 'quality sweating'. The author explains:
"Noriaki Kano, the noted scholar of the Japanese quality movement, built his 'quality sweating' theory on similar observations about the Japanese quality movement. In short, a shock to an existing hidebound system seems critical to stimulating rethinking."
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04 Ig Nobel on the Radio in the US, and Face-to-Face in Tokyo
In the wake of the two Ig events that happened early this month (the Ig Nobel Face-to-Face event at MIT on November 11 and the Ig Nobel show at Imperial College London on November 18) there are two events upcoming.
· On Friday, November 24, the Science Friday radio program will broadcast its Ig Nobel special: improbable.com/2023/11/21/science-friday-day-after-thanksgiving-ig-nobel-prize-special-broadcast
· On Sunday, November 17, there will be an Ig Nobel Face-to-Face event at Miraikan, in Tokyo, Japan. www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/news/press/202311133242.html
Looking farther ahead:
Events are scheduled in 2024 in the USA, Austria, and Denmark.
Additional events — including events on the spring 2024 Ig Nobel EuroTour — are being hatched, and will be listed at improbable.com/upcoming-events/
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05 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Management Fads
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
"The Life Cycle of Academic Management Fads," Robert Birnbaum, The Journal of Higher Education, vol. 71, no. 1, 2000, pp. 1-16.
doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2000.11780813
The author explains:
'Institutions of higher education are always under pressure to become more efficient and effective. In response, many have attempted (either voluntarily or under mandate) to adopt new management systems and processes that were originally designed to meet the needs of (presumably) more efficient business or governmental organizations. One contemporary observer, referring to "the hum of corporate buzzwords" in the academy, has commented that "a person would be hard pressed these days to find a college that doesn't claim to be evaluating or reshaping itself through one of these approaches". This "hum" is not new; it has been a feature of the higher education landscape for at least the past forty years.'
Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:
MANAGEMENT FADS LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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06 Gobbledygook Limerick Winners
The judges have chosen co-winners in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:
"Mastering the Use of Gobbledygook: Studies on the Development of Expertise Through Exposure to Experienced Practitioners' Deliberation on Authentic Problems," Klas Karlgren, doctoral thesis, Stockholm University, 2003.
www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1072709&dswid=-4982
Winning limerickicist SUSAN AIROLDI writes:
I tried to write gobbledygook.
I thought that I knew what it took.
It worked! Hip hooray!
In less than a day
I'd written a thousand-page book.
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
I decided, by hook or by crook,
I was giving this paper a look.
I did not comprehend
What it said, in the end.
It needed more gobbledygook.
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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Taste, Fan, Disk
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG: www.improbable.com :
· Why Geology Leaves a Bad Taste in Your Mouth
· Persistence in Experimenting with a Fan
· Cutting of Entrapped Metal Penile Ring With Diamond Cutting Disk and Mozart
· …and much more
WEEKLY COLUMN IN NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE:
newscientist.com/author/marc-abrahams/
LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS):
www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/
New Member:
· Jan Philipp Roer, LFHCfS
PODCAST ARCHIVE:
www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/improbableresearch
MASTODON: @MarcAbrahams@mstdn.science
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/improbable_research/
PATREON: patreon.com/ImprobableResearch
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08 Conflicting Fads
This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:
"Managing Conflicting Fads; The Relation Between Downsizing and Quality Management," A. Wiele and A. Brown, Erasmus School of Economics, 1998.
www.persistent-identifier.nl/urn:nbn:nl:ui:15-b2e8a823-98d1-48b2-9c0d-7f59863f8e02
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TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.
SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!
improbable.com/magazine-2/
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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA — Nov 11, 2023
· Imperial College London, UK Nov 18, 2023
· Science Friday – Ig Nobel broadcast — Nov 24, 2023
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, Miraikan, Tokyo, Japan,— Dec 17, 2023
· Arisia, Boston, MA, USA — Jan 2024
· Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria, — Jan 26, 2024
· Ball of the Sciences, Vienna, Austria, — Jan 27, 2024
· AAAS Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, USA — Feb 17, 2014
· U Aarhus, Denmark — Apr 4, 2024
— OTHER EVENTS TBA
[All live events in 2023-2024 are subject to pandemical constraints and adventures.]
For details and additional events, see: improbable.com/upcoming-events/
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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.
improbable.com/publications/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: improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/
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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
improbable.com
EDITORIAL: MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: subscriptions AT improbable.com
Cambridge, MA, USA
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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 2023, Annals of Improbable Research
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