Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 10:49:03 CDT From: Patrick Douglas CrispenTo: Multiple recipients of list TOURBUS Subject: TOURBUS 10/19 -- AIR /~~~|~~~~|~~~~|~~~~|~~~~|~~~~|~~~~|~~~~|~~~~|~~~~~/~~~|~\ |____|____|____|____|____|____|____|____|____|____/ | \ | /_____|---\ / --T-H-E---I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T---T-O-U-R-B-U-S--> ///////| | | |///////| | ~~~/~~~\~/~~~\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~\~~~~ \___/ \___/ "Why Surf When U Can Ride The Bus?" \___/ TODAY'S STOP: THE ANNALS OF IMPROBABLE RESEARCH TODAY'S ADDRESSES: mini-air@air.harvard.edu http://www.improb.com/ First off, let me apologize for posting today's BUS a day late. Your humble tourguide has been a busy beaver this week :) Today's stop is at the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). AIR is a self-described "splendidly subversive science humor magazine" produced by the founders and entire former editorial staff of "The Journal of Irreproducible Results." AIR's editorial board consists of more than 40 distinguished scientists from around the world, including eight Nobel Laureates and a convicted felon. As an example of what the folks at AIR mean when they say that AIR is a "splendidly subversive science humor magazine," AIR vol. 1, no. 6, the November/December 1995 issue, is a special issue devoted partially to research on animal behavior. Two of the most prominent articles are: A) A report from Swiss researchers (Inaudil, de Lega, Di Tullo, Forno, Jacquet, Lehmann, Monti and Vurpillot) who have identified and captured the butterfly whose wingflapping causes rainfalls in Paris. B) A report from researchers at the University of Waterloo (Carron, Brawley and Widmeyer) concerning a program of independence training for lemmings. While the print version of AIR actually costs money (GASP!), you can still find pieces of AIR's articles on the Internet. The nice folks at AIR have created a mailing list called "mini-AIR," which is an monthly electronic newsletter of overflow tidbits from The Annals of Improbable Research. mini-AIR is available over the Internet, free of charge. To subscribe, send an E-mail letter to: LISTPROC@AIR.HARVARD.EDU which says SUBSCRIBE MINI-AIR YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME in the body of your e-mail letter, replacing YOURFIRSTNAME and YOURLASTNAME with your first and last names. If you have access to a Web browser, you might also want to check out the Hot AIR homepage at http://www.improb.com/ Hot AIR has links to all of the old mini-AIR posts, as well as to some rather funny scientific investigations. Hot AIR has some hysterical information on it, and I still get a good chuckle thinking about the "Hubble News" page. The folks at AIR are probably most famous for their Ig Noble Prizes. A few days ago, AIR held its Fifth First Annual Ig Noble Prize ceremony, honoring people whose achievements "could or should not be reproduced." I won't ruin the surprise by telling you this year's winners (you can find that out from both MINI-AIR and Hot AIR), but I will tell you that last year's Ig Noble prize for Mathematics went to 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. (The award was accepted by the Honorable Terje Korsnes, consul of Norway, who accepted the Ig on behalf of the people of Hell, a little town in Norway.) TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY -------------------------------- RATS - noun. Entitled power or privilege. Usage: "We Southerners are willing to fight for out rats." (*Today's Southern Word comes from a school teacher in America's southern most state: Hawaii. As part of her class' study of the "War of Northern Aggression" (known to Yankees at the "Civil War"), she showed her class the movie Gettysburg. The students wondered why the Confederacy was fighting for their "rats." The answer, of course, is obvious: Southerners have very friendly rats ... in fact, you could almost say that we have some downright civil rats*) PERSONAL STUFF: * One of my best friends invited me to the Purdue/OSU game this weekend, so if you see a really tall guy in the Purdue student section wearing a red jacket and an Alabama hat, that's me :) * I want to thank the folks at the University of Kentucky for making me feel so welcome during my speech there on Wednesday. I had a blast, and I just want to remind everyone at UK that, on behalf of the University of Alabama, you can keep Bill Curry :) ******************** The WorldWideWeb Handbook ********************** For a good book on how to write your own Web files, see "The WorldWideWeb Handbook" (ITCP ISBN 1-85032-205-8) Details on the Web at http://www.ucc.ie/~pflynn/books/wwwbook.html *********************************************************************** TOURBUS - (c) Copyright 1995, Patrick Crispen and Bob Rankin All rights reserved. Redistribution is allowed only with permission.
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