Business students’ feelings about the academy and themselves
Buzzwords in political commercials
Doors, open versus closed, behaviour of peole regarding
Elevators, communications in
Expensive versus inexpensive cars, behaviour of owners of
Fads of yesteryear
Fruits and vegetables, business students’ consumption of
Gloves, lost
Husbands with working wives
Integrity, the word
Looks, another
Look, final
Look, follow-up
Look, further
Look, an informal
Manners, business
Mobile phones, drivers’ use of
Multiple choice test questions, opinions about whether to change answers of
Queasiness
Railroad departure service, varying quality of
Santa, children’s perceptions about visiting
Santa, parents’ perceptions about visiting
Sirens, use of
Sports shoes, colour preference for
Supermarket checkout, counting of items at
Supermarket checkout, delays at
Uncooked minced beef, shoppers’ perceptions about
Vision tests for driver licensing, honesty of people taking
Winter storms, weather persons’ predictions of
Work arrival time
Work departure time
Women driving vans
Yes, the word
While John W. Trinkaus sometimes suggests possible ways to look at his findings, interpretation is something he mostly – and proudly – avoids. When he notices something that can be tallied, he tallies it. In a profession ruled by the famous dictum ‘publish or perish’, he counts.
Trinkaus has become at least slightly better known since he was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in literature in 2003; he, together with his research, was symbolically donated (by this author) to the BBC radio programme The Museum of Curiosity in 2012. On 10 May 2013, Professor Trinkaus gave his last lecture at the Zicklin School, after fifty years on the faculty.
Trinkaus, John, and Karen Dennis (1991). ‘Taste Preference for Brussels Sprouts: An Informal Look’. Psychological Reports 69 (3): 1165–6.
Kaswell, Alice Shirrell (2003). ‘Trinkaus: An Informal Look’. Annals of Improbable Research 9 (3): 4–15, http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i3/trinkaus0.html.
Call for investigators
The Strange Seat Taxonomy, announced here, is searching for specimens of unusual academic chairs (in other, grander, words: endowed faculty positions, which in many cases do include actual pieces of furniture on which the faculty member can physically sit).
Definition: For the purposes of the project, a Strange Seat is an actual academic chair at a university or college that is memorable or unusual or that has a particularly curious cogno-intellectual story behind it. As a model specimen, consider: The Streisand Professorship in Intimacy and Sexuality at the University of Southern California, generously funded by the Funny Girl-cum-Funny Lady herself since 1984.
Purpose: To identify and catalogue the chairs and, were applicable, their endowments.
If you know of a unique specimen to add to the collection, please provide:
The name and a twenty-word description of the chair, unless the name of the chair is twenty words longer, in which case the description should be reduced by a factor.
A photograph of the current chair, if available.
Several Internet URLs pointing to clear, unarguable documentation of the chair’s existence at the assigned institution of higher learning.
Send to [email protected] with the subject line:
STRANGE SEAT TAXONOMY
Floating ideas
Almost nothing is more romantic than a mathematical theorem – if that theorem is stuffed into a bottle and cast adrift during a perilous sea voyage in wartime, and if the person who wrote it is one of the world’s top mathematicians. Shizuo Kakutani, who died in 2004, just a few days before his ninety-third birthday, threw many such bottles – call them hundred-proofs, if you will – into the ocean when he was a young man. The fate of those bottles is a complete mystery.
Kakutani went on to become a legendarily great mathematician. Like most famous mathematicians, his fame is mostly limited to those in his profession.
Indirectly, though, the public is almost aware of Kakutani for two reasons. The book A Beautiful Mind was about the mathematician John Nash, who won a Nobel Prize in economics. Nash’s most famous concept, a Nash Equilibrium, is based on the Kakutani Fixed Point Theorem. And Shizuo Kakutani’s daughter, Michiko, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book reviewer for the New York Times.
Although Shizuo Kakutani was a gregarious sort for a mathematician, the story of his bottled theorems was only told outside the tight circles of those who really, truly, deeply understand the nature of, well, circles, shortly after his death. Stanley Eigen, a mathematics professor at Northeastern University in Boston, wrote an appreciation of his longtime collaborator and friend for the Annals of Improbable Research. Eigen explains:
At the start of World War II, Kakutani was a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. With the outbreak of war he was given the option of staying at the Institute or returning to Japan. He chose to return because he was concerned about his mother.
So he was put on a Swedish ship which sailed across the Atlantic, down around the Cape, and up to Madagascar, or thereabouts, where he and other Japanese were traded for Americans aboard a ship from Japan.
The trip across the Atlantic was long and hard. There was the constant fear of being torpedoed by the Germans. What, you may wonder, did Kakutani do. He proved theorems. Every day, he sat on deck and worked on his mathematics. Every night, he took his latest theorem, put it in a bottle and threw it overboard. Each one contained the instruction that if found it should be sent to the Institute in Princeton. To this day, not a single letter has been received.
Are some of those missing proofs startling and important? Is there any real chance of finding them? No one knows.
There is precious little scholarship about messages found in bottles. Devoted scavengers will find three little piles. Robert Kraske’s too-slim (at only ninety-six pages) book The Twelve Million Dollar Note: Strange But True Tales of Messages Found in Seagoing Bottles. The messages-in-bottles collection at the Turks and Caicos National Museum. The rubber-duckies-and-other-things-that-wash-up-on-beaches research of Seattle-based oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer. These, our greatest chronicler/gatherers of such materials, have so far disappointed us in the case of Kakutani.
Still, still, in the combined vastness of the oceans and of time, some of Kakutani’s theorems might come into the possession of persons who can both read and appreciate their value.
Kraske, Robert (1977). The Twelve Million Dollar Note: Strange But True Tales of Messages Found in Seagoing Bottles Nashville: T. Nelson.
Sadler, Nigel (2001). ‘Essay on Messages Found in Bottles’. The Astrolabe: The Newsletter of the Turks and Caicos National Museum (autumn): n.p.
Portfolio of a genius
I’d been awaiting the arrival of the latest edition of Portfolio of a Genius. For the better part of fifteen years, I had been receiving the laboriously crafted, increasingly thick versions of this wondrous work. They arrived in my mailbox, always surprising by their very existence.
The author, James E. Shepherd Jr – the subject and author of the Portfolio – switched from paper to CD just before the turn of the millennium, perhaps at the request of the heavily burdened postal workers of the world. Each new paper version was thicker than its predecessor, and weightier, too. ‘Mighty thick and mighty heavy’ would be a good way to describe the later pre-CD incarnations.
The CD versions were of course svelter, but also fuller than ever with documentation of the life, the correspondence and especially the correspondence about the corresp
ondence, of Mr Shepherd. Each new version contained all that was in its predecessors, and also copies of all subsequent correspondence sent and received pertaining thereto. In the 2009 edition, Shepherd included a photo of his MENSA membership card, which was due to expire on 31 March of that year. It was a new item in the Portfolio.
A web version existed for several years, but then vanished. I am intending to schedule time to schedule time to begin reading a new version, in whatever form it may take, if and when it appears. Perhaps you will, too.
Shepherd is a nonpareil – but he is not the only genius who has no match or equal, and no real rival. Somehow, though each is unique, they are legion. They seem, most of them, not to acknowledge, or maybe not even to see, the presence of the others. It’s almost as if each exists in his or her own universe. Nearly every one of these peerless peers has his or her own theory about their particular universe, and about how and why he or she is peerless. In my experience, with what seems a large number of such geniuses, hes outnumber shes.
Here is a sampling of their books. The public may scoff, but it’s possible that somewhere in the midst of this list is a theory that really does explain everything.
Theory of Interaction: The Simplest Explanation of Everything by Eugene Savov.
A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality by Ken Wilber. Wilber writes that ‘the leading edge of consciousness evolution stands today on the brink of an integral millennium …’
And Now the Long Awaited – “THEORY OF EVERYTHING” by Eugene Sittampalam. The book’s back cover makes a calculatedly interesting offer: ‘The author welcomes a refutation from any reader and offers hereby all his profits from this work – UP TO ONE MILLION US DOLLARS – to the first reader to successfully do so.’
The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe by Stephen W. Hawking
The Power and Freedom of the Human Spirit: Introducing Another Theory of Everything by Earle Josiah, offers ‘A coherent theory of everything that presents a new understanding of the wondrous world that extends beyond the barriers of normal life.’
Unitivity Theory by Leroy Amunrud claims that: ‘To the knowledge of the author, this is the first book to contain a derived theory that treats the whole universe in a unified way, and discloses that the universe is simple as one, two, four.’ The author, who says he previously worked on the Apollo Project at Honeywell Inc and Montana State University, has also ‘been involved in ranching through out his entire life where he studied the logic of the cowboys’.
The Scientific Theory of Everything by Pacifico M. Icasiano has a cover photo of Mr Icasiano holding his chin. The publisher says, ‘Pacifico M. Icasiano presents A Scientific Theory of Everything and unifies all sciences, both physical and metaphysical, including religion!’
There are many other such books. In theory – and, I expect, in fact – there will be many more.
Savov, Eugene (2002). Theory of Interaction: The Simplest Explanation of Everything. Sofia, Bulgaria: Geones Books.
Wilber, Ken (2000). A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality. Boston: Shambhala.
Sittampalam, Eugene (2008). And Now the Long Awaited – “Theory of Everything”. New York: Vantage Press.
Hawking, Stephen W. (2002). The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe. Beverly Hills, CA: New Millennium Press.
Josiah, Earle (2007). The Power and Freedom of the Human Spirit: Introducing Another Theory of Everything. Charleston, SC: BookSurge Publishing.
Amunrud, Leroy (2007). Unitivity Theory: A Theory of Everything. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.
Icasiano, Pacifico M. (2003). The Scientific Theory of Everything. Pittsburgh, PA: Dorrance Publishing.
May we recommend
‘An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything’
by Antony Garrett Lisi (published in arXiv, 2007)
The author finishes his detailed report by stating that if his ‘theory is fully successful as a theory of everything, our universe is an exceptionally beautiful shape’.
Brilliant early explanations of brilliance
Psychologists still grind away (sometimes at each other) at explaining what genius is, and where it comes from. The effort, now weary and tendentious, was exciting in its earlier days. In 1920, Lewis Terman and Jessie Chase of Stanford University published a report called ‘The Psychology, Biology and Pedagogy of Genius’, summarizing all the important new literature on the subject.
Those early twentieth-century psychologists showed a collective genius for disagreeing about almost everything.
J.C.M. Garnett, in a study called ‘General Ability, Cleverness, and Purpose’, offered a formula for genius. Measure a person’s general ability; then measure their cleverness, then square both numbers and add them together, then take the square root. Genius.
We learn about C.L. Redfield, who ‘cites 571 specially selected pedigrees to prove his theory’ that ‘rapid breeding inevitably leads to the production of inferior stock’, but that ‘inferior stock can be transformed into superior stock in 100 years, and into eminent men in 200 years.’
James G. Kiernan wrote a monograph called ‘Is Genius a Sport, a Neurosis, or a Child Potentiality Developed?’ Terman and Chase tell us that ‘Kiernan, after a description of the ability of various men of genius, arrives at the conclusion that genius is not a sport nor a neurosis.’ Kiernan’s paper hints, right at the start, that its author knew neurosis intimately. The byline lists a few of his credentials, beginning with: Fellow, Chicago Academy of Medicine; Foreign Associate Member, French Medico-Psychological Association; Honorary Member, Chicago Neurologic Society; Honorary President, Section of Nervous and Mental Disease Pan-American Congress; Chairman, Section on Nervous and Mental Diseases, American Medical Association; and continuing on at some length.
A book by Albert Mordell explains that ‘the literary genius is one who has experienced a repression, drawn certain conclusions from it, and expressed what society does’, and that ‘By making an outlet for their repressions in imaginative literature Rousseau, Goethe and many others have saved themselves from insanity.’
Bent on being thoroughly inclusive, Terman and Chase mention a book called Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, by G. Stanley Hall. ‘In two volumes’, they write, ‘Hall has given us an epochmaking study, chiefly from the psychological point of view, of the greatest moral genius of all time.’ Terman and Chase seem to carefully dodge a bullet (or maybe a firing squad or even a massive artillery bombardment) of criticism, remarking only that ‘It is impossible even to characterize such a monumental work in the few lines here available, much less to summarize it’. There’s much more.
All told, Terman and Chase describe ninety-five scholarly and semi-scholarly papers and books, devoting a sentence or three to each of them. The exception, the lengthiest section of their report, is a lavish description of Terman’s own recent studies, commencing with the words ‘Terman devotes 102 pages of his latest book to . . . ’. Terman’s writings, reportedly, are filled with insights ‘of special interest’.
Terman, Lewis M., and Jessie M. Chase (1920).‘The Psychology, Biology and Pedagogy of Genius’. Psychological Bulletin, 17 (12): 397–409.
Garnett, J.C.M. (1919). ‘General Ability, Cleverness, and Purpose’. British Journal of Psychology 9: 345–66.
Redfield, Casper Lavater (1915). Great Men and How They Are Produced. Chicago: Privately pub., p. 32.
Kiernan, James G. (1915). ‘Is Genius a Sport, a Neurosis, or a Child Potentiality Developed?’. Alienist and Neurologist 36: 165–82, 236–46, 384–95.
— (1916). ‘Is Genius a Sport, a Neurosis, or a Child Potentiality Developed?’. Alienist and Neurologist 37: 70–82, 141–57.
— (1919). ‘Is Genius a Sport, a Neurosis, or a Child Potentiality Developed?’. Alienist and Neurologist 40: 114–18.
Mordell, Albert (1919). The Erotic Motive in Li
terature. New York: Boni & Liveright, p. 250.
Hall, G. Stanley (1917). Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology. New York: Doubleday & Page, p. 733.
In brief
‘Images of Madness in the Films of Walt Disney’
by Allen Beveridge (published in Psychiatric Bulletin, 1966)
Two
High, Brainy Mindedness
In brief
‘“Holy PTSD, Batman!”: An Analysis of the Psychiatric Symptoms of Bruce Wayne’
by S. Taylor Williams (published in Academic Psychiatry, 2012)
Some of what’s in this chapter: How to grasp Machiavellianism • Mental magic • One: Must take what they say seriously • Spatula to the brain • Honestly: Appropriated thoughts • Judging while asleep • Strudels in the brain • Laugh into unconsciousness • Mutter, Russia, about unhappiness • Prozac is for animals • In defence of one’s new parking spot • Red bull bull • An Eiffel Tower in the head • Insulting insulting language • Bad breath in the head
Princely behaviour
By reputation, stockbrokers have manipulative personalities. So do people who sell cars or buildings. Professor Abdul Aziz took the measure of these groups of professionals, hoping to see whether each lives up or down to the legend.
Aziz, who teaches business at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, together with colleagues published three studies a decade ago: ‘Relations of Machiavellian Behavior with Sales Performance of Stockbrokers’; ‘Machiavellianism Scores and Self-rated Performance of Automobile Salespersons’; and ‘Relationship between Machiavellianism Scores and Performance of Real Estate Salespersons’. All appear in the journal Psychology Reports.
Aziz explains that a Machiavellian person is someone who ‘views and manipulates others’ for ‘personal gain, often against the other’s self-interest’. He says this ‘modern concept of Machiavellianism was derived from the ideas of [Niccolò] Machiavelli as published in [his book] The Prince in 1532’, and that interest in it as a personality trait blossomed in the 1970s.
This is Improbable Too Page 3