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The mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
Issue Number 1995-06
October, 1994
ISSN 1076-500X
Key words:science humor,improbable research,Ig Nobel
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The mini-journal of inflated research and personalities
published by The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
at The MIT Museum
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[snip]
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1995-06-02 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 1995-06-03 below.
[snip]
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1995-06-03 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:
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The 1994 Ig Nobel Prizewinners
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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.
[snip]
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1995-06-08 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.
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1995-06-09 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!
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1995-06-10 How to Receive to mini-AIR, etc.(*)
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1995-06-11 AIR's Mailing and Internet Addresses
Our mailing address:
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(c) copyright 1994, The Annals of Improbable Research
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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
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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"
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- T o d d E. V a n H o o s e a r -
``'''vanhoose@lalaland.cl.msu.edu - vanhoose@msu.edu - vanhoose@sparhawk.cl.msu.edu
(._.) Michigan State University - East Lansing, MI USA
(_) Computer Laboratory - Department of Communication
`---' <A HREF="http://lalaland.cl.msu.edu/~vanhoose/">My Home Page</A>
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