[mini-AIR] mini-AIR: Art & Unintelligibility & Famousness (& Psychologists)

Sun Mar 28 14:52:34 EDT 2021

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
March 2020, issue number 2021-03. ISSN 1076-500X.
	<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>
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  Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
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01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Special Chocolate Issue
03 The Meaning of Unintelligibility in Modern Art
04 Limerick Challenge: Creativity-Fame from Connectedness
05 Pathogen Death from Pasta Winner
06 MORE IMPROBABLE: Bike Instability, Tea Flotation, Hidden Ball
07 Psychologists on Psychologists: Fizzled Focus on Famousness
20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
31 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
32 — Contact Info (*)
33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

	Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.

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02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Special Chocolate Issue

	WHAT YOU ARE READING AT THIS MOMENT
	is just our monthly newsletter, (mini-AIR).

	This is overflow bits-and-pieces overflow detritus from
	the actual magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). 

The special CHOCOLATE issue (vol. 27, no. 1) of the magazine is available:
<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume27/v27i1/v27i1.php>

Tables of Contents: <http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>

	SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, 
	or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!):
	<https://gumroad.com/improbable>

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03 The Meaning of Unintelligibility in Modern Art

This month's maybe-random research item:

The Meaning of Unintelligibility in Modern Art, Edward Francis Rothschild, University of Chicago Press, 1973, 102 pages, ISBN 0882110411. <https://tinyurl.com/y9kekg63>
The author explains:

"Because the artist is 'unintelligible' does not signify that his work has no meaning.... We have tried to show how 'unintelligibility' is of the very essence of 'meaning' in modern art.... We, who are not artists, may be fascinated or bewildered but we are too inarticulate to crystallize our reactions in an expression of affirmation or protest."

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04 Limerick Challenge: Creativity-Fame from Connectedness

This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:

"Fame as an Illusion of Creativity: Evidence from the Pioneers of Abstract Art," Banerjee Mitali and Paul L. Ingram, Columbia Business School Research Paper No. 18-74, 2020. 
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3258318>
The authors, at HEC Paris and Columbia Business School, explain:

"We build a social structural model of fame, which departs from the atomistic view of prior literature where creativity is the sole driver of fame in creative markets. We test the model in a significant empirical context: 90 pioneers of the early 20th century (1910–25) abstract art movement. We find that an artist in a brokerage rather than a closure position was likely to become more famous. This effect was not, however, associated with the artist’s creativity, which we measured using both objective computational methods and subjective expert evaluations, and which was not itself related to fame."

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

	CREATIVITY-FAME-CONNECT LIMERICK COMPETITION
	c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>

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05 Pathogen Death from Pasta Winner

The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:

"Death Kinetics of Pathogens in a Pasta Product," Fu‐Hung Hsieh, K. Acott, and Ted P. Labuza, Journal of Food Science, 41, no. 3, 1976, pp. 516-519. <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2621.1976.tb00660.x>

INVESTIGATOR A.S. KASWELL writes:

Kinetics of death in the dough
Is so, so, so, so, so, so, so
  A thing we should cherish:
  When pathogens perish
In pasta, we gain when they go.

This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

When boiling pasta, it's wise
To induce salmonella's demise.
  That's fantastic, although
  What I most want to know
Is how the bacterium dies.

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06 MORE IMPROBABLE: Bike Instability, Tea Flotation, Hidden Ball

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

BLOG: <http://www.improbable.com/>:
* Instability of an Unsteered Bicycle
* Avoiding Teabag Flotation Annoyances [patent]
* Baseball / Medical Skills: The Hidden Ball Trick
*…and much more

LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS) 
<https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/> 

PODCAST: 
<https://www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/>:
* Episode #1057: "Fifty Shades, by Gray"
* Episode #1058: "How Kids Learn to Say 'Trick or Treat' "
* Episode #1059: "The Best Life Opera (Act 2)"
* Episode #1060: "How Much Saliva Does a Five-Year-Old Produce?"

FACEBOOK: <http://www.facebook.com/improbableresearch>

TWITTER: @ImprobResearch, @MarcAbrahams, #IgNobel

INSTAGRAM: <https://www.instagram.com/improbable_research/>

PATREON: <www.patreon.com/ImprobableResearch>

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07 Psychologists on Psychologists: Fizzled Focus on Famousness

"Fame in Psychology: A Pilot Study," Adrian Furnham, Psychology, vol.9, no.6, June 2018. 
<https://www.scirp.org/(S(351jmbntvnsjt1aadkposzje))/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=85453>
The author, a famed psychologist, explains:

"An opportunist sample was asked to nominate nine psychologists under different categories. Participants, all qualified psychologists, reported finding the task both challenging and engaging. There was little agreement between participants with a number of nominated psychologists appearing on different, sometimes contradictory, lists….
In conclusion, this was a pilot study on how certified and chartered psychologists thought about their peers. It required them to reflect on questions that they appeared not to have done so before. The results were not particularly surprising…"

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	FIND (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.

	SUBCRIBE TO THE ACTUAL (PDF) MAGAZINE!
	<www.improbable.com/magazine/>

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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS

2021 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony		—September 9, 2021
2021 Ig Informal Lectures			—TBA 2021
2021 Ig Nobel EuroTour (we hope)		—TBA 2021
Ig Nobel Exhibition, Japan (we hope)	—TBA 2021

[All live events in 2021 are subject to pandemical constraints and adventures.] 

For details and additional events, see
<http://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>

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30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)

The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine, 
in PDF form. 
It's packed with research that makes people laugh, then think.

	<www.improbable.com/magazine/>
	SUBSCRIPTIONS	($25, for six issues) 
	BACK ISSUES 	($5 each)

(mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating appendix to the actual magazine.)

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31 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)

This newsletter, Mini-AIR, is just a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
<www.improbable.com>
EDITORIAL: <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: <subscriptions AT improbable.com>
Cambridge, MA, USA
Twitter: @ImprobResearch

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33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Nan Swift, Stephen Drew
PROOFREADER: Ambient Happenstance
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, Sheldon Glashow, Richard Roberts

Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the
(c) copyright 2021, Annals of Improbable Research

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