Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 68

Peter Drake joins Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHfC)

Peter Drake has joined the The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). He says:

I have a BA in English from Willamette University, an MS in Computer Science from Oregon State University, and a PhD in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from Indiana University, Bloomington. My dissertation was on how very young children come to understand numbers. After arriving at my current institution, Lewis & Clark College, I worked on creating artificially intelligent programs to play the classical Asian game of Go. (My work was cited in the AlphaGo paper.) With that problem conquered (not solved — that has a technical meaning), I have since moved on to using deep convolutional neural networks to analyze photos of clouds and creating video games to teach people about earthquake preparedness.

I am now the chair of the Department of Mathematical Sciences. Fortunately, due to my work as faculty advisor for the college’s Fire Arts club, I have experience juggling flaming knives.

My hair used to be much shorter, but I have grown it out during the pandemic. When a student mistook me for Steven Pinker, I knew it was time to join the LFHCfS.

Peter Drake, Ph.D., LFHCfS
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Chair, Department of Mathematical Sciences
Lewis & Clark College
Portland, Oregon, USA

Recent Progress in Bruce Springsteen Studies

Very few popular music artists are the subject of exclusively dedicated peer-reviewed journals. There is, however, at least one – who features in the Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies (BOSS)

It aims to publish scholarly, open-access, peer-reviewed essays pertaining to Bruce Springsteen. And seeks to encourage consideration of Springsteen’s body of work primarily through the political, economic, and socio-cultural factors that have influenced his music and shaped its reception.

Here is a partial list of recently published articles :

• Signifying (and Psychoanalyzing) National Identity in Rock: Bruce Springsteen and The Tragically Hip

• Bruce Springsteen as Post-Christian Pastor

• The Theological Virtues According to Bruce Springsteen

• Springsteen as Developmental Therapist: An Autoethnography

Scholarly considerations within the corpus of Springsteen Studies are not, of course, restricted to BOSS – Here are some other examples :

• “And you don’t like, don’t like the way I talk”: Authenticity in the language of bruce springsteen. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication.

• Bruce Springsteen fan behavior and identification Psychology of Music, Volume: 49 issue: 4, page(s): 691-703

• De Born to Run à Born in the USA, une approche géographique de la nostalgie dans les chansons de Bruce Springsteen  Annales de géographie 2020/5 (N° 735), pages 5 à 32 (English version here)

• “This American Skin”: Bruce Springsteen and the complexity of American identity Clark, Simon (2017) PhD thesis, Murdoch University., Austalia.

• No Surrender: Bruce Springsteen, Neoliberalism and Rock and Roll’s Melancholic Fantasy of Sovereign Rebellion Graves, Kaitlin N. Florida Atlantic University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2017.

Research research by Martin Gardiner

Podcast Episode #1084: “Chalk and Mathematicians”

In Podcast Episode #1084, Marc Abrahams shows an unfamiliar research study to biologist Dany Adams. Dramatic readings and reactions ensue.

Remember, our Patreon donors, on most levels, get access to each podcast episode before it is made public.

Dany Adams encounters:

“Chalk: Materials and concepts in mathematics research,” Michael J. Barany Donald MacKenzie, in: C. Coopmans, M. Lynch, J. Vertesi and S. Woolgar (Eds) Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited, 2014, pp. 107–130 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press).

Seth Gliksman, Production Assistant

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Podcasts, AntennaPod, BeyondPod and elsewhere!

The Bacteria in Discarded, Chewed Chewing Gum: 2021 Ig Informal Lecture

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.

In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. We are releasing these lectures one at a time.

The 2021 Ig Nobel for Ecology was awarded to Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela Vidal-Verdú, and Manuel Porcar, for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries.

REFERENCE: “The Wasted Chewing Gum Bacteriome,” Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela Vidal-Verdú, and Manuel Porcar, Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. 16846, 2020.

Joseph W. Brown joins Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHfC)

Joseph W. Brown has joined the The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). He says:

Pithy statement (in limerick form):

There once was a student hirsute,
Phylogenetics became his pursuit.
With all vim and muster,
He overloaded the cluster,
‘Twas lucky he did not get the boot! (^_-)≡☆

Please note that I am the person on the left side of this photograph.

Joseph W. Brown, Ph.D., LFHCfS
Research Fellow
Department of Ornithology, Royal Ontario Museum
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Milk Chocolate Liver

We are not endorsing this product. Nor are we not not endorsing it. The product having come to our awareness, we simply are making you aware that it exists: Milk chocolate liver.

 

 

Seeking the new Improbable graphic designer

Our beloved graphic designer, the modest and sublime Geri Sullivan, is retiring. We at the magazine Annals of Improbable Research are looking for an improbably great graphic designer to join our gang. The main duty is to lay out each of the six new issues we create every year. (One of those six issues focuses on the year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners and ceremony.)

The requirements are: (1) a talent and skill at graphic design; (2) a calm appreciation of things that make people laugh, then think; and (3) a fairly firm grasp on reality. This is a freelance position. The pay is unimpressive and reliable. It’s best if you live in the Boston, Massachusetts area, but if you don’t that’s not the end of the world.

If you think you might be our next graphic designer, please email the editor, Marc Abrahams at

Ig Nobel Prize winner Bolsonaro Announces New Medical Insights

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who in 2020 won an Ig Nobel Prize for his teachings about the Covid-19 pandemic, is yet again pushing public health discussions into new and perhaps unimagined territory.

The Washington Post reports:

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Facebook removed a video in which Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro falsely associated coronavirus vaccines with the onset of AIDS, putting the social media giant at the center of the nation’s explosive debate over misinformation.
Bolsonaro, a coronavirus skeptic, has often used his Facebook Live dispatches to communicate with his most ardent supporters, spread misinformation about the virus and undermine attempts to curb its spread….
During the Thursday night transmission, Bolsonaro said reports from the United Kingdom suggested that “vaccinated people are developing the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.” U.K. health officials afterward told the Brazilian news outlet G1 that the statements were false……

Bolsonaro’s 2020 Prize-winning Achievement

The 2020 Ig Nobel Prize for medical education was awarded to Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.

Establishment of the “Moron in a Hurry” paradigm

by Peter Keen, C-type colour print, 1964

“A Moron in a Hurry” is a formalized legal term used in the UK and Canada and the US. It was first established in a 1978 UK court case : The Morning Star Cooperative Society v Express Newspapers Limited, and subsequently reaffirmed by Alfred Thompson “Tom” Denning, OM, PC, DL (Baron Denning,) [pictured] in the case of Newsweek Inc. v British Broadcasting Corp. [1979] R.P.C. 441

The phrase is typically used in cases of copyright infringement – examining the question of whether a moron in a hurry would spot the difference (or similarity) of two products or services.

If you have time for details, see Wikipedia

Wood or Poo, Against Tradition? A Cutting Tale of Two Knives

Would wood ever be a better choice than the metals generally used to make commercial table knives? Alternatively, what about using frozen human feces? The first of those questions has a new answer, delivered in a study called “Hardened Wood as a Renewable Alternative to Steel and Plastic,” by Bo Chen, Ulrich H. Leiste, William L. Fourney, Yu Liu, Qiongyu Chen, and Teng Li, published in the journal Matter, 2021. The authors, at the University of Maryland, report:

We demonstrate a potential low-cost and sustainable hard material made from natural wood. Through a simple and effective approach, bulk natural wood can be processed into a hardened wood (HW) with a 23-fold increase in hardness. To demonstrate the potential applications of HW, we show that an HW table knife can be made nearly three times sharper than commercial table knives. An HW nail can be as functional as a steel nail with comparable performance but is immune from rusting, a key failure mechanism of steel nails.

Further details are plumbed and videologized in Jennifer Ouellette’s article about the study, in Ars Technica.

Wood or Poo?

An attempt to answer the metal-versus-frozen-poo question, done by researchers at Kent State University, not only answered that question but also won the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize in physics. That prize was awarded to Metin Eren, Michelle Bebber, James Norris, Alyssa Perrone, Ashley Rutkoski, Michael Wilson, and Mary Ann Raghanti, for showing that knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work well.

They documented that research, in the study “Experimental Replication Shows Knives Manufactured from Frozen Human Feces Do Not Work,” Metin I. Eren, Michelle R. Bebber, James D. Norris, Alyssa Perrone, Ashley Rutkoski, Michael Wilson, and Mary Ann Raghanti, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, vol. 27, no. 102002, October 2019.