-------------------------------------------------------------------------- This file has been provided by "The Annals of Improbable Research" and is the responsibility of that organization. All questions regarding this material should be sent directly to their indicated addresses below, not to Vortex Technology. Thank you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ The mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR") Issue Number 1994-06 October, 1994 ISSN 1076-500X Key words:science humor,improbable research,Ig Nobel ------------------------------------------------------------ The mini-journal of inflated research and personalities published by The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) at The MIT Museum ============================================================ ----------------------------- 1994-06-01 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1994-06-01 Table of Contents 1994-06-02 AIRhead News Flashes and Flushes 1994-06-03 Announcing: The 1994 The Ig Nobel Prizewinners 1994-06-04 AIRhead Project 2000: preliminary results 1994-06-05 May We Recommend... 1994-06-06 Upcoming Events 1994-06-07 Calls for Papers 1994-06-08 Purpose of mini-AIR (*) 1994-06-09 How to Subscribe to AIR(*) 1994-06-10 How to Receive to mini-AIR, etc.(*) 1994-06-11 AIR's Mailing and Internet Addresses (*) 1994-06-12 Please DO make copies! (*) Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue. ------------------------------------------------------------ 1994-06-02 AIRhead News Flashes and Flushes 1. The 1994 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held on October 6. Once again, no deaths resulted. Details, including a list of the winners, are provided in section 1994-06-03 below. 2. Chances are high that mini-AIR readers will soon be able to obtain a series of improbably memorable digital images of the must lurid and scientific sort. We are also planning, after a fashion, to have a presence on the World-Wide-Web. Details on both matters will be announced in a future issue of mini-AIR. Acronyms may be involved; however, a decision pro or con has not yet been made. 3. Uncontrolled AIRhead proliferation. Readers continue to respond to our manipulative offer to become an AIRhead for a Day. These AIRheads are taking copies of our attractively appalling flyer, and handing them out or posting them at meetings and in provocative places. If you would like to be an AIRhead, please email us at . Please specify whether you want the postscript version or the paper version. For ecological reasons, we do not offer plastic. If you choose paper, please include your street mailing address. 4. We apologize for the substandard number of typos in the last issue. ------------------------------------------------------------ 1994-06-03 Announcing: The 1994 The Ig Nobel Prizewinners On October 6, the winners of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes were honored, in a fashion, by three Nobel Laureates, 1200 hecklers, the Norwegian Consul, and a rat control scientist at a tumultuous ceremony at MIT. The Prizes honor individuals whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced." Five additional Nobel Laureates (Sidney Altman, David Baltimore, Nicolas Bloembergen, Jerome Friedman, and Philip Sharp) participated in the Ceremony with congratulatory tapes and slides. This was the fourth annual ceremony. Past winners include Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, who won the 1992 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for "his uniquely compelling methods of bringing people together." The festivities included speeches by three of the new winners -- Dr. Brian Sweeney (Biology), Dr. Robert Lopez (Entomology) and, via tape recording, Dr. Richard Dart (Medicine). Sweeney and Lopez had their Prizes -- cheap gold-painted wax half-brains -- personally handed to them by the Nobel Laureates. The Nobel Laureates -- Richard Roberts ( Physiology or Medicine, 1993), Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry, 1986), and William Lipscomb (Chemistry, 1976) also each presented a 30-second "Heisenberg Certainty Lecture." Heisenberg Lectures were also presented by: Harvard Chemist Cynthia Friend; the father of artificial intelligence, MIT's Marvin Minsky; astonomer Margaret Geller of Harvard; and neurophysiology pioneer Jerome Lettvin of MIT. Those Heisenberg Certainty lecturers who exceeded the time limit were thrown from the stage by a referee. The Nobel Laureates also joined with a five-woman dance group to perform a brief ballet number, "The Interpretive Dance of the Electrons," with music from Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite." Following is a list of the new Ig Nobellians: ============================== The 1994 Ig Nobel Prizewinners ============================== BIOLOGY W. Brian Sweeney, Brian Krafte-Jacobs, Jeffrey W. Britton, and Wayne Hansen, for their breakthrough study, "The Constipated Serviceman: Prevalence Among Deployed US Troops," and especially for their numerical analysis of bowel movement frequency. [The study was published in "Military Medicine," vol. 158, August, 1993, pages 346-348.] PEACE John Hagelin of Maharishi University and The Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, promulgator of peaceful thoughts, for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C. [Details were published in "Interim Report: Results fo the National Demonstration Project To Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental Effectiveness In Washington, D.C., June 7 to July 30, 1993," Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, Fairfield, Iowa.] MEDICINE This prize is awarded in two parts. First, to Patient X, formerly of the US Marine Corps, valiant victim of a venomous bite from his pet rattlesnake, for his determined use of electroshock therapy -- at his own insistence, automobile sparkplug wires were attached to his lip, and the car engine revved to 3000 rpm for five minutes. Second, to Dr. Richard C. Dart of the Rocky Mountain Poison Center and Dr. Richard A. Gustafson of The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, for their well-grounded medical report: "Failure of Electric Shock Treatment for Rattlesnake Envenomation." [The report was published in "Annals of Emergency Medicine," vol. 20, no. 6, June 1991, pp. 659-661.] ENTOMOLOGY Robert A. Lopez of Westport, NY, valiant veterinarian and friend of all creatures great and small, for his series of experiments in obtaining ear mites from cats, inserting them into his own ear, and carefully observing and analyzing the results. [Dr. Lopez's report was published in "The Journal of the American Veterinary Society," vol. 203, no. 5, Sept. 1, 1993, pp. 606-607.] PSYCHOLOGY Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, practitioner of the psychology of negative reinforcement, for his thirty-year study of the effects of punishing three million citizens of Singapore whenever they spat, chewed gum, or fed pigeons. PHYSICS The Japanese Meterological Agency, for its seven-year study of whether earthquakes are caused by catfish wiggling their tails. LITERATURE L. Ron Hubbard, ardent author of science fiction and founding father of Scientology, for his crackling Good Book, "Dianetics," which is highly profitable to mankind or to a portion thereof. CHEMISTRY Texas State Senator Bob Glasgow, wise writer of logical legislation, for sponsoring the 1989 drug control law which make it illegal to purchase beakers, flasks, test tubes, or other laboratory glassware without a permit. ECONOMICS Jan Pablo Davila of Chile, tireless trader of financial futures and former employee of the state-owned Codelco Company, for instructing his computer to "buy" when he meant "sell," and subsequently attempting to recoup his losses by making increasingly unprofitable trades that ultimately lost .5 percent of Chile's gross national product. Davila's relentless achievement inspired his countrymen to coin a new verb: "to davilar," meaning, "to botch things up royally." MATHEMATICIANS The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama, mathematical measurers of morality, for their county-by-county estimate of how many Alabama citizens will go to Hell if they don't repent. Full details of the 199 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, including photographs and highlights of the acceptance speeches and 30- second Heisenberg Certainty Lectures, will be presented in December in the first print issue of The Annals of Inprobable Research. ------------------------------------------------------------ 1994-06-04 AIRhead Project 2000: preliminary results As announced in mini-AIR 1994-02-03 (June, 1993), we are compiling a list of studies, projects, and products that involve the number two thousand. Randomly selected items from the list include: Item # 85 (submitted by investigator Peter Martin) Sudbury 2000, a plan to diversify the local economy of this Northern Ontario town. Items # 231a and #232b (submitted by investigator David Coderre) PS2000 - Canadian federal public service renewal initiative Defence2000 - Canadian Dept. of Defence renewal initiative Item #662 (submitted by investigator Jeremy Marshall) Rover 2000 automobile Item #662 (submitted by investigator Terry Mawby) Triumph 2000 automobile Item #662 (submitted by investigator Jim Larson) M&M's covered chocolate candy. Larson points out that while the use of Roman numerals may be quaint, no one can deny the focus this product maintains on the future. Using only mid 20th century technology, this chocolate treat is able to dissolve in one's mouth while remaining completely inert in the hands - surely one of the earliest applications of "smart materials." Item #662 (submitted by investigator David J Walton) SimCity 2000, a computer simulation from Maxis [NOTE: Due to space limitations, we do not indicate here which listed items are obsolete. That information is contained in AIRhead Project 2000 Official Publication #2000FNP/21 (obs.)] ----------------------------------------------------------- 1994-06-05 May We Recommend... Research reports that merit a trip to the library: "The deterioration and conservation of chocolate from museum collections," by Helen Cox, "Studies in Conservation," vol 38, 1993, pp. 217-223. (Thanks to Arlen Michaels for bringing this to our attention.) "Measurement of the vibrational response of porcine lungs to low- frequency underwater sound", by Thomas N. Lewis, James S. Martin, and Peter H. Rogers, "Journal of the Acoustical Socciety of America, vol. 95, no. 5, Pt 2, p 2830. (Thanks to Fred Cummins for bringing this to our attention.) "Recognizing and coping with the vertical patron," by Nathan M. Smith and G. Hugh Allred, "Special Libraries," Vol. 67, no. 11, Nov. 1976, pp. 528-533. (Thanks to Charles Oppenheim for bringing this to our aattention.) "Laser-induced autofluorescence for medical diagnosis", by K. Koenig and H. Schneckenburger, "Journal of Fluorescence," 1994, vol 4, no 1, pp 17-40, describes the use of fluorescence-based detection of a variety of diseases and infections from the autofluorescence of porphyrins produced by pathological microorganisms. The article is illustrated with a fluorescence image of sebaceous follicles on the author's nose. (Thanks to T. Hawkins for bringing this to our attention.) (We welcome your suggestions for this column. Please include full citations. If possible, please send us a photocopy of the paper.) ----------------------------------------------------------- 1994-06-06 Upcoming Events MENSA CONVENTION, Chicago, IL Sat., Oct. 29, 7 pm. For info: Dianne Miller, (708) 747-5651 SCIENCE FRIDAY IG BROADCAST Fri. afternoon, Nov. 25 "Talk of the Nation/Science Friday" will broadcast a (nearly) complete recording of this year's Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. This is the day after Thanksgiving in the US. Check your local NPR station for broadcast time. INTERSOCIETY POLYMER SOCIETY Mon., October 10, 1995 Stouffer Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore, MD The society recommends early reservations. Info: (518) 387-7942 *** If you would like to be a host/instigator for an Improbable Science Event at your city, university, hospital, research center, high school, book store, etc., ASAP please contact us. ------------------------------------------ 1994-06-07 Calls for Papers CALL FOR PAPERS on the topic "The Use of Bacteria as Foodstuff." Reports of your research RESULTS are preferred to speculative essays. CALL FOR NOMINATIONS for the 1995 Ig Nobel Prizes. Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded for achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced. Nominations may be submitted, anonymously or otherwise, by e-mail or by standard mail. ****************************************************************** 1994-06-08 Purpose of mini-AIR (*) The mini-Annals of Improbable Research (mini-AIR) publishes news about improbable research and ideas. Specifically: A) Haphazardly selected superficial (but advanced!) extracts of research news and satire from The Annals of Improbable Research. B) News about the annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. C) News about other science humor activities intentional and otherwise. WHAT IS AIR? (An introduction, of sorts) AIR is a new magazine produced by the entire former editorial staff (1955-1994) of "The Journal of Irreproducible Results (JIR)," the world's oldest satirical science journal. The new magazine's co-founders are Marc Abrahams, who edited JIR from 1990-1994, and Alexander Kohn, who founded JIR in 1955 and was its editor until 1989. AIR is published by the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA. The editorial board consists of more than 40 distinguished scientists from around the world including seven Nobel Laureates. EAach October, AIR and the MIT Museum produce the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, honoring people whose achievements cannot or should not be reproduced. --------------------------- 1994-06-09 How to Subscribe to AIR(*) Catch up on things you need to know: The Taxonomy of Barney * A Natural History of the Articulated Lorry * Effectiveness of Chinese Fortune Cookies * A Review of the Nairobi Telephone Directory * The Aerodynamics of Potato Chips * The Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony * Scientific Gossip * Nobel Thoughts (offbeat interviews with Nobel Laureates) * Elegant Results (reviews of cosmetics ads) * Hot Air (exhalations from our readers) * X-Rays of the Rich and Famous * and then some! The first issue of AIR will appear in December, 1994. Join us as a subscriber, and as a collaborator! =========================================================== =========================================================== Please send a subscription to The Annals of Improbable Research for a period of (check one): ___ 1 year (six issues) ___ 2 years (twelve issues) Name: Addr: Addr: City: State: ZIP: Country: Phone (voice): FAX: Email address: Payment method: ___ Mastercard ___ Visa ___ American Express Card #: Exp. date: (If you prefer not to send your credit card number via email, please fax, phone or mail in your order.) ___Check (drawn on US bank) or int'l money order is enclosed. ___ This is a gift from: Name: Addr: Addr: City: State: ZIP: Country: Phone (voice): FAX: Email address: ___Send renewal notice to me. ___Send renewal notice to my beneficiary. 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Here are two examples: SUBSCRIBE MINI-AIR Irene Curie Joliot SUBSCRIBE MINI-AIR Nicholai Lobachevsky To stop subscribing, send the following message to the same address: SIGNOFF MINI-AIR To obtain a list of back issues, send this message: INDEX MINI-AIR To retrieve a particular back issue, send a message specifying which issue you want. For example, to retrieve issue 94-00001,send this message: GET MINI-AIR 94-00001 To obtain a somewhat complete list of gopher sites that maintain mini-AIR, email us a request. ::::: AIR extracts are on USENET The USENET news group clari.feature.imprb_research presents a syndicated weekly column of reports extracted from The Annals of Improbable Research. The material presented there is different from what appears here in mini-AIR. [Please note: The news group is available to you if and only if your Internet site subscribes to the Clarinet newsgroups.] --------------------------- 1994-06-11 AIR's Mailing and Internet Addresses Our mailing address: The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) The MIT Museum 265 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139 USA (617) 253-4462 fax: (617)253-8994 Editorial matters: (617) 253-8329 PLEASE include your Internet address in all printed correspondence. Our Internet addresses: Editorial matters: air@mit.edu Ig Nobel matters: ig@mit.edu --------------------------- 1994-06-12 Please make copies! (*) We urge you to distribute copies of mini-AIR or excerpts from it. The only limitations are: A) Please indicate that the material appeared in mini-AIR and is reprinted with permission. B) You do NOT have permission to copy or excerpt this document for commercial purposes. ------------------------------------------------------------ (c) copyright 1994, The Annals of Improbable Research ------------------------------------------------------------ The mini-Annals of Improbable Research (mini-AIR) Editor: Marc Abrahams (marca@mit.edu) Chairman of the Editorial Board: Alexander Kohn Sports Desk & Technical Support: Christopher Small (chris@das.harvard.edu) Associate Editors: Mark Dionne, Stanley Eigen, Jane Patrick Technical Difficulties: Diego Garcia, Francesca Thurston Authority Figure: Barbara Linden ============================================================ IMPORTANT -- The Annals of Improbable Research is IN NO WAY associated with the name "The Journal of Irreproducible Results" or with the publisher of "The Journal of Irreproducible Results" ============================================================