Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 448

We are Horatian, not Juvenalian! …Or so some say…

We discovered today that, in Wikipedia’s entry for Satire, the Ig Nobel Prizes are the first exemplar of one of the two kinds of satire. The entry reads:

Horatian vs Juvenalian

Satirical literature can commonly be categorized as either Horatian or Juvenalian,[27][need quotation to verify] although the two are not entirely mutually exclusive.

Horatian

Horatian satire, named for the Roman satirist Horace (65–8 BCE), playfully criticizes some social vice through gentle, mild, and light-hearted humour. It directs wit, exaggeration, and self-deprecating humour toward what it identifies as folly, rather than evil. Horatian satire’s sympathetic tone is common in modern society.[citation needed]

Examples:

The Ig Nobel Prizes.
Bierce, Ambrose, The Devil’s Dictionary.
Defoe, Daniel, The True-Born Englishman.
Gogol, Nikolai, Dead Souls.
Groening, Matthew ‘Matt’, The Simpsons.
Kubrick, Stanley, Dr. Strangelove.
Lewis, Clive Staples, The Screwtape Letters.
Mercer, Richard ‘Rick’, The Rick Mercer Report.
Pope, Alexander, The Rape of the Lock.
Twain, Mark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Juvenalian

Juvenalian satire, named after the Roman satirist Juvenal (late 1st century – early 2nd century CE), is more contemptuous and abrasive than the Horatian. Juvenalian satire addresses social evil through scorn, outrage, and savage ridicule. This form is often pessimistic, characterized by irony, sarcasm, moral indignation and personal invective, with less emphasis on humor. Strongly polarized political satire is often Juvenalian. Also see: Satires of Juvenal.

Examples:

Barnes, Julian, England, England.
Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451.
Bulgakov, Mikhail, Heart of a Dog.
Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange.
…

Lost Cats, Considered Academically (Laurier #3 of 4)

There are very few scholarly works based around the theme of lost cats. For an example paper, see the work of Dr. Laurier, who is a Senior Lecturer in Geography & Interaction, Institute of Geography & the Lived Environment, University of Edinburgh.

Dr. Laurier takes on the cat question in his study:

‘The Cat in the Shed : pets as moral and spatial features of a community’.

“Owners can grow worried about their cat’s absence. A cat can go missing from a household. It can be a lost living thing in a neighbourhood. We can search for a cat that we cannot find without hunting for it, we can search for it because we want to recover it, not to trap it or kill it. What is that makes a cat a cat like that and not like a mole or a rat or a salmon? Just how do we care for this animal?”

The investigation used as its basis a series of ‘Lost Cat’ notices affixed to various outdoor structures in an urban area of Edinburgh, Scotland. Example :

‘MISSING / Small female / Ginger cat / with

blue collar / /// / Last seen 5th December Carrington Street, Please Phone xxxxxxx // ((handwritten))

please check your gardens + sheds + garages.’

“From the paper trail that the owners left I acquired a sense of their attachment to this cat. It offere [sic] me a sense of their earnest effort to discover their cat’s fate. I thought they would be lucky should they ever get it back. Missing cats mostly stay missing. [*see note below]

What does this imply for the cat?

For the cat, it has become a noticeable absence. It has become a marked cat (like a marked man).

The cat cannot read, it has no idea that has become a marked cat unlike the crime suspect who may find their face printed on the front of every newspaper in the country.”

The paper ends, in a section entitled ‘Leftovers’ with this observation :

“Lost cats need to be formulated as such since otherwise there can be some ambiguity, which the cat cannot resolve.

Cats cannot ask directions. Cats can mistakenly show something to humans which they have limited ability to repair. My brushing against your leg and following you into your home should not be mistaken for my being a stray, it is merely that I am both hungry, friendly and trusting.”

COMING SOON : the concluding part of this series …

* Note :

The only other missing cat paper Improbable can find determined that in Montgomery County, Ohio, 53% of lost cats are recovered (and 66% of them return without assistance). J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2007 Jan 15;230(2):217-20. Search and identification methods that owners use to find a lost cat.

Lord LK, Wittum TE, Ferketich AK, Funk JA, Rajala-Schultz PJ. Source: Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

 

 

Research maw

This image of a terrifically toothy open mouth greets visitors to the Shi Lab’s web site at UCLA. We learned about it from Aatish Bhatia, who advises that you go to the site and “click on ‘Research‘ for full effect“:

That “Research” page can lead to several little adventures, including a violent little presentation about antimicrobial peptides.

Among the lab’s many published studies, one seems potentially most pleasing for anyone who likes to declaim, loudly and proudly, colorful phrases:

“Phenotypic analyses of frz and dif double mutants of Myxococcus xanthus”  [W. Shi, Z. Yang, H. Sun, H. Lancero, and L. Tong, FEMS Microbiology Letters,  vol. 192, pp. 211-215.]

A jet-lag / viagra scientist and his prize experience

Deigo Golombek waxes happily and thoughtfully about his Ig Nobel Prize experience, in a new newspaper essay and a fairly recent TV interview [see below]. In 2007 the Ig Nobel Prize for aviation was awarded to Golombek and his colleagues — Patricia V. Agostino and Santiago A. Plano— at Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters. [Their research is described in the study "Sildenafil Accelerates Reentrainment of Circadian Rhythms After Advancing Light Schedules," Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 23, June 5 2007, pp. 9834-9.]

Here’s Golombek in November 2012, in La Nacion:

Científicos, ¿el alma de la fiesta?

Los desopilantes premios IgNobel se entregan en una ceremonia en Harvard organizada por los Anales de la Investigación Improbable. Despiertan carcajadas, pero son de verdad

Todo el mundo espera con ansias el anuncio de los premios Nobel, que suele darse en octubre de cada año. Pero unas semanas antes están los otros Nobel, los divertidos y, para algunos, los que realmente valen la pena. Sí, estamos hablando de los maravillosos y desopilantes premios IgNobel (que, pronunciado rápidamente, se parecen a innoble en inglés), que se otorgan a investigaciones que primero te hacen reír (“¿pero qué disparate es este?”) y después pensar (“ah… ¡era en serio!”). Los diez IgNobel anuales se entregan en una increíble ceremonia en Harvard, siempre guiada por el físico Marc Abrahams y sus cómplices de los Anales de la Investigación Improbable, con un público fanático, óperas alusivas, experimentos, discursos de siete palabras (que si son más largos son interrumpidos por una deliciosa e inaguantable niña de 8 años) y verdaderos premios Nobel encantados de entregar estatuillas y divertirse como locos. Porque de eso se trata: de reírse de nosotros mismos y de mostrarle al mundo que sí, los científicos pueden ser el alma de la fiesta. El tema general de este año fue fuerzas y, convenientemente, el premio consistía en un martillo dentro de un contenedor de vidrio con la leyenda en caso de emergencia, rompa el vidrio con un martillo…

And here he is in the land of television:

BONUS: At the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, Lou Ignarro, whose scientific discoveries both contributed to the development of the drug known as Viagra and later led to Ignarro being awarded a Nobel Prize, was the prize in the ceremony’s annual Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest.

O, octopus, where art thou? (A video)

There are many startling videos of octopuses doing surprising octopus things. This video, by Flora Lichtman for Science Friday, is one of the most very all of that:

The scientist is Roger Hanlon. The octopus is nameless. (Thanks to investigator Susan Kany for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: From long ago, Bill Saidel and the perplexing flounder: To Sea, and Not to See

The Omniverous Reader’s Dilemma: Hamburgers Regain Their Appeal

Voracious ingestion of the contents of a book leads not necessarily to lasting, author-desired consequences, suggests this study:

“Reading a book can change your mind, but only some changes last for a year: food attitude changes in readers of The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Julia M. Hormes, Paul Rozin, Melanie C. Green, and Katrina Fincher, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 4, 2013. (Thanks to investigator Kerry Dorr for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the State University of New York, Albany, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explain:

“We examined changes in attitudes related to food production and consumption in college students who had read Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma as part of a University-wide reading project. Composite attitudes toward organic foods, local produce, meat, and the quality of the American food supply, as well as opposition to government subsidies, distrust in corporations, and commitment to the environmental movement were significantly and substantially impacted, in comparison to students who had not read the book. Much of the attitude change disappeared after 1 year; however, over the course of 12 months self-reported opposition to government subsidies and belief that the quality of the food supply is declining remained elevated in readers of the book, compared to non-readers. Findings have implications for our understanding of the nature of changes in attitudes to food and eating in response to extensive exposure to coherent and engaging messages.”

BONUS: Joseph Brean explores the matter, in an article in the National Post

BONUS FACT, AND RELATED SUGGESTION: Most people spell “omnivorous” without using the letter “e”. Other people should be careful about checking the spelling of the word, lest they fling  an “e” into its gut when they write headlines.

Smelov’s investigation of HPV on toilet seats in international airports

Lead author Smelov and colleagues write, in this letter to a medical journal, about a careful investigation that may (and may not) have small or nonexistent implications:

“Are human papillomavirus DNA prevalences providing high-flying estimates of infection? An international survey of HPV detection on environmental surfaces,” Vitaly Smelov [pictured here], Carina Eklund, Laila Sara Arroyo Mühr, Emilie Hultin, and Joakim Dillner, Sexually Transmitted Infections, epub November 4, 2013. (Thanks to investigator Henry de Vries for bringing this to our attention.)  The authors, at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden and North-Western State Medical University named after I.I. Mechnikov, St. Petersburg, Russia, report:

We studied surfaces that frequently contact anogenital skin: toilet seats in airport restrooms. Apparently clean seats in 23 airports located in 13 countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and UK) were sampled with the same cytobrush sampling procedure as typically used in HPV-epidemiological studies….

HPV DNA was found in 22.8% of the 101 β-globin positive samples, with high-risk HPVs being found in 15.8%, HPV-16 in 12.9% and multiple HPV types in 3.0%….

Presence of HPV DNA does not necessarily indicate the presence of infectious virus. The present study therefore does not provide any evidence regarding routes of HPV transmission.

Flammable trousers: then, and later, and now

Behold three eras in the international saga of trouser flammability.

THEN: The 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for agricultural history was awarded to James Watson of Massey University, New Zealand, for his study, concerning the period between World War I and World War II, called “The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers.”

LATER: This month, in 2013, the Danger Room blog reports that “U.S. Navy Invests in Coveralls That Won’t Burst Into Flames“. The article says: ”The U.S. Navy has decided it’s finally time to get sailors new shipboard coveralls that won’t burst into flames and melt with a touch of a single match.”

Danger Room presents details, spiced with trouser-flammability-test videos. One video is from the suboptimal year 1996:

NOW: The other video is from the presumably glorious now:

BONUS: An advice columnist answers the question “Where can I find asbestos trousers for my boyfriend?”

 

A poetical, time-centric film about fluid dynamics

Flora Lichtman produced another poetical video for Science Friday, this one about the mammal micturation duration research study that is garnering so much attention, and that will be discussed as part of a landmark session at the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, November 24, 2013:

BONUS: Listen to Science Friday‘s radio segment on the subject.

BONUS: The Science Friday program is produced in New York City. If you are or plan to be in New York City, it may be worth your time to peruse Alina Adams’s “NYC Bathrooms: How to Find Public Restrooms When You’ve Got to Go!“

Roundabout research (Laurier #2 of 4)

Improbable recently profiled the work of Dr. Eric Laurier, who is a Senior Lecturer in Geography & Interaction, at the Institute of Geography & the Lived Environment, University of Edinburgh. Specifically, his paper on ‘Why people say where they are during mobile phone calls‘ Dr. Laurier’s work centres around the realisation that we miss so much of what is familiar to us because of its very familiarity. Take for example ‘Roundabouts’ ['Traffic Circle' in the US] – which are the subject of a work-in-progress paper which examines what drivers and passengers do when they traverse one.

Over 30 months, video-ethnography data were collected via the Habitable Cars Project. (Economic and Social Research Council grant number RES-000-23-0758 )

Leading to observations:

“Though it has one in its middle, the roundabout itself is not dealt with as an island, it is part of a gestalt of road features come upon through the practice of driving and the organising device that is a journey. More specifically the roundabout’s features are realised in different ways according to the course of action at hand. In this article an array of practice provides just such specific tasks that lead to specific features of the roundabout being realised.”

In such ways, the research arrived at conclusions :

“The roundabout provides a setting where ‘where next’ is made relevant both for those moving in and through known and unknown environments.”

The paper can be read in full here : Before, in and after: cars making their way through roundabouts

COMING SOON : More ‘familiar things’ research from Dr. Laurier