Mini-AIR

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")

May 2025, issue number 2025-05. 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: Questions (?)

03 Anatomy of Booing

04 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Booing, Past and Present

05 Tribute-to-Bunky-Jellinek Winner

06 MORE IMPROBABLE: Deodorants, Cats, Symmetrical Men

07 The Advantage of Spectator Booing

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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: Questions (?)

The special QUESTIONS issue (vol. 31, no. 3) of the magazine is full of — some might mutter the words "bursting with" — questions. The TOC and several articles are online at

improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-may-june-2025-vol-31-number-3/

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 Anatomy of Booing

This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:

"Booing: The Anatomy of a Disaffiliative Response," Steven E. Clayman, American Sociological Review, 1993, pp. 110-130.

doi.org/10.2307/2096221

The author, at the University of California, Los Angeles, explains:

"Applause usually begins promptly and its onset is coordinated primarily by audience members acting independently in response to prominent junctures in a speech. Booing is usually delayed and is coordinated primarily by audience members monitoring each other's conduct so as to respond together. This asymmetry between applause and booing is explained in terms of general structures of interaction as documented in previous research on affiliative and disaffiliative responses in ordinary conversation."

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04 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Booing, Past and Present

This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:

"Booing," Dan Rebellato, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 23, no. 1, 2013, pp. 11-15. doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2013.765102

The author, at the University of London, explains:

"Until the nineteenth-century, there is no evidence of booing: hissing and whistling are generally preferred. Booing is now widespread in Britain and the United States, but less common elsewhere....

[Booing] is a moment where the audience represents the theatre to itself by dramatizing and drawing attention to the fault-lines of performance.... Booing is theatre at its most philosophical and its most theatrical."

Send your perfictly formed, perfectly pleasing limerick to:

BOOING LIMERICK COMPETITION

c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

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05 Tribute-to-Bunky-Jellinek Winner

The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:

"A Tribute to Bunky at 125: A Comprehensive Bibliography of EM Jellinek's Publications," Judit H. Ward and William Bejarano, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, vol. 77, no. 3, 2016, pp. 371-374.

doi.org/10.15288/jsad.2016.77.371

Winning limerickicist FAITH CORMIER writes:

For alcohol research that's funky,

You could count on our man, dear old Bunky.

He lived as a wanderer

And alcohol ponderer.

I wonder, was he also hunky?

This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

Bibliographers, here we devote

Our work to this author of note.

The more that we drink,

The more that we think

More things must be things that he wrote.

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06 MORE IMPROBABLE: Insurance-Fat, Deodorants, Vanilla Pudding

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

BLOG (improbable.com):

• Does Health Insurance Make You Fat?

• Psychology Tackles a New Question: Deodorants

• Calculating the Guano-Equivalent Output of NYC Residents

• …and much more

SUBSTACK: (improbablestuff.substack.com)

• How High Can a Cat Jump for Vanilla Pudding?

• Evaluation of Whisker Stress in Cats

• IMPROBABLE SEX: Do Women Sexually Crave the Smell of Symmetrical Men?

• …and much more

MASTODON: @MarcAbrahams@mstdn.science

FACEBOOK: facebook.com/improbableresearch

PATREON: patreon.com/ImprobableResearch

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07 The Advantage of Spectator Booing

This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:

"Spectator Booing and the Home Advantage: A Study of Social Influence in the Basketball Arena," Donald L. Greer, Social Psychology Quarterly, vol 46, no. 3, September 1983, pp. 252-61. doi.org/10.2307/3033796

The author, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, explains:

"College basketball games were attended by investigators who used a behavior observation technique to isolate blocks of game time immediately following instances of sustained spectator protest. For both home and visiting teams, 4 measures of performance occurring during these post-booing periods (i.e., scoring, turnover, foul, and composite performance) were compared with performance during normal crowd conditions. Results reveal that episodes of spectator protest were related to an increase in the performance advantages enjoyed by home teams..... Findings appear to be consistent with the belief that collective protest by sports crowds is an effective type of social support that can contribute significantly to the home advantage."

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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

· Balticon, Baltimore, MD, USA — May 23-26, 2025

· Cosmos Club, Washington DC, USA — May 28, 2025

· 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony — Sep 18, 2025

· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face — Sep 20, 2025

· Falling Walls, Berlin, Germany — Nov 2025

· Monell Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA — Nov 12, 2025

For details and additional events, see: improbable.com/upcoming-events/

If your institution would like to host an event,

please get in touch with us at:

MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

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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 ($40 for six issues)

BACK ISSUES ($8 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

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