Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 180

Kate and David love hydration

“Julia loves raspberries” and “Lynne loves ketchup” were the first in our series of celebrations of solicitation bots. We receive many varieties of an all-too-frequent kind of “hey editor” solicitation. Here’s another from the growing collection:

Hi There,

I hope everything is going well on your end :)

I am Kate, and I’m on the content team at [REDACTED].

I was checking out some of your articles at improbable.com today and found pretty good stuff you have written about health tips. I absolutely love that resource and definitely going to share few articles of yours on my social media channel as well.

My colleague David recently put together a pretty comprehensive piece on “15 Foods That Help You Stay Hydrated”. There is a ton of information out there on health. Our infographic was designed to cut through the noise a bit. You can check this out at [REDACTED].

It’s an up to date and comprehensive information on the above topic I believe (also appreciate your valuable feedback on the topic). You may can consider adding the infographic to your blog (I can also write a short intro to go along with it if you’d like?).

I believe it can be a good fit at https://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/.

Thanks for your time and I’ll see you around!

Cheers,

Kate

 

Noseworthy on Contagion Effects of Celebrity Memorabilia (study)

What do Britney Spears’ (chewed) bubble gum, Bernie Madoff’s footstool and Lady Gaga’s fake fingernail have in common? They’ve all been sold at celebrity memorabilia auctions.

Professor Theodore J. Noseworthy [pictured] is an expert on the so-called ‘contagion’ effects of such celebrity memorabilia, and says (in a Schulich.School of Business press release on the subject)

“[…] people can make some pretty odd inferences about the behaviour of people known to have purchased celebrity memorabilia,”

“For example, if someone were to buy a jacket previously owned by convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff and then behaved in an honest way, such as returning a lost wallet with money intact to the owner, they would be judged to be even more morally exemplary than their behaviour indicated.”

See: How inferred contagion biases dispositional judgments of others , Journal of Consumer Psychology, Volume 27, Issue 2, April 2017, Pages 195-206.

Note: The paper mentions that :

“[…] people are willing to pay more for George Clooney’s sweater as long as it has not since been dry-cleaned.“ citing Newman et al., 2011 – but Improbable has so far been unable to find any mention of George Clooney in the paper.

David (Daedalus) Jones, and Perpetual Motion Machines

“Perpetual Motion Machines” is a documentary film about the great David Jones, creator the Daedalus column that for decades made the readers of New Scientist, Nature, and The Guardian laugh, then think.

David took part in the 2001 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, to the great delight of many.

Men of The Netherlands, men of Denmark, men of Germany—Beware!

If you are a male bicyclist—as is more likely in some nations than in others—consider the implied warning in this new medical study. Men of The Netherlands, men of Denmark, men of Germany—Beware!

The study is  “Effect of Oscillation on Perineal Pressure in Cyclists: Implications for Micro-Trauma,” Thomas Sanford, Adam J. Gadzinski, Thomas Gaither, E. Charles Osterberg, Greg P. Murphy, Peter R. Carroll, and Benjamin N. Breyer, Sexual Medicine, epub 2018. The all-male authors, at the University of California, San Francisco, report:

Genital numbness and erectile dysfunction in cyclists may result from repeated perineal impacts on the bicycle saddle (micro-trauma) that occur during routine cycling….

METHODS: Participants were fit to a study bicycle to ensure all cyclists had the same torso angle (60 ± 1 degree) and maximum knee angle (150 ± 1 degree). A lever system was used to generate oscillation events of 3 progressively increasing magnitudes. Perineal pressure was continuously measured using a pressure sensor on the bicycle saddle….

CONCLUSION: …We found a strong linear relationship between oscillation magnitude and perineal pressure during cycling, which was mitigated by a seatpost shock absorber. The use of shock absorption in bicycle design may reduce perineal micro-trauma and potentially improve cycling-associated perineal numbness and erectile dysfunction.

Lynn loves ketchup

“Julia loves raspberries” was by the first in our series of celebrations of solicitation bots. We receive many varieties of an all-too-frequent kind of “hey editor” solicitation. Here’s another from the growing collection:

hey Marc,

Hope you’re having a good day, sorry to interrupt you :)

I’m emailing because I found a page on your site that mentions something about ketchup: https://www.improbable.com/2013/11/07/the-physics-of-squeezing-sheep-through-a-bottleneck/

I’m with [REDACTED] and we made a huge post about ketchup and how to make it, and I think it’s super useful.

You can see it here: [REDACTED]

If you like it, maybe you’d link it from your site? :)

Many thanks,

Lynne

 

Divine boredom (new papers)

Has God ever been bored, or is currently bored, or might, at some stage, become bored? In a 2017 paper for the scholarly journal Religious Studies (Volume 53, Issue 1, pp. 51-70) authors Vuko Andrić (Akademischer Rat., University of Bayreuth, Germany) and Attila Tanyi (University of Tromsø, Norway) suggest that if God is omnitemporal [i.e. always has been, is, and always will be] he* might be quite likely to suffer from boredom. And if so, they say, that would give rise to a fundamental philosophical paradox :

“[However] since God is the greatest possible being (as we assumed God to be, following perfect being theology), he cannot be bored. Hence, God cannot be omnitemporal, but must be timeless; and if he cannot be timeless, then he does not exist.”

See: ‘God and eternal boredom’. 

This viewpoint, however, has now been questioned, perhaps challenged, or even refuted, by Jerome Gellman (emeritus professor of philosophy, Ben-Gurion University, Israel) who, in a new paper for the same journal, asserts that :

“Since God has no self-needs, God has no unfulfilled needs. But, to fall into boredom requires experiencing a lack, having self-regarding needs unfulfilled. So, God cannot fall into boredom.”

And so, by extension :

“Since it is logically impossible for God to fall into boredom, God can be everlasting in time.”

See: ‘It is logically impossible for everlasting God to fall into boredom’ Religious Studies (2018) 54, 285–288

* BONUS Assignment [optional] : The authors of both papers consistently use the personal pronoun ‘he’ when referring to God – discuss.

Ig Nobel TICKETS will go on sale 2 weeks from today

TICKETS for the 28th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will go on sale exactly two weeks from today: on TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2018.

Tickets will be available exclusively from the Harvard Box Office.

BONUS: Who might you meet at the Ig?

How to record with a potato

This video explains how to record with a potato:

After watching the video, you may have questions. And a potato.

[HT BoingBoing]

The Riddles Method for Neutralizing Skunk Smell

People have devised many ways to try to remove the odor gifted by a skunk. This is one of them. It is one of the very few invented by people named Riddles.

“Method for neutralizing offensive chemical odors,” U.S. Patent 6718914, issued to Philip J. Riddles, April 13, 2004. The patent document specifies:

“Exposure to skunk spray is a great annoyance because of its very disagreeable and persistent odor due to low molecular weight thiols. The odor may persist for several days on anything contacted by the spray, e.g., wearing apparel, pets, personal articles, and the like. In particular, dogs are often exposed to the spray and become a nuisance when attempts are made to decontaminate them…. In accordance with the invention, the cleaning composition is applied to the affected area, for example, the area of an object sprayed by a skunk. The area is thoroughly shampooed with the cleaning composition and then either rinsed or wiped clean. The affected area is thereby neutralized of the disagreeable odor of the offensive chemical.”

Commercializing the Prize-winning Egg-Unboiling Machine

“Graphene company partners with university to commercialise egg-unboiling machine” is the headline on a Phys.Org report about the Ig Nobel Prize-winning invention. The report says:

“Technology capable of producing high-grade graphite at a price and scale viable for use in energy storage devices, coatings and polymers is being commercialised following the establishment of a new Australian company. The new company 2-D Fluidics Pty Ltd is owned equally by Flinders University and First Graphene. It will commercialise the Vortex Fluidic Device (VFD), which was invented at the South Australian university by Professor Colin Raston and his team.

“In 2015, the researchers from the Flinders Institute for NanoScale Science and Technology in Adelaide were awarded an Ig Nobel Award for creating the Vortex Fluidic Device and using it to unboil an egg. The technology has since been used to develop a range of novel nano materials without the use of harsh or toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process….”

About the Prize

The 2015 Ig Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to Callum Ormonde and Colin Raston [AUSTRALIA], and Tom Yuan, Stephan Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin Pugliese, Tivoli Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, Gregory Weiss [USA], for inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg.

They describe their research in the study “Shear-Stress-Mediated Refolding of Proteins from Aggregates and Inclusion Bodies,” Tom Z. Yuan, Callum F. G. Ormonde, Stephan T. Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin M. Pugliese, Tivoli J. Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, Colin L. Raston, Gregory A. Weiss, ChemBioChem, vol. 16, no. 3, February 9, 2015, pp. 393–396.

Here are instructive videos about the original research teams in Australia and California: