What happens when you tell narcissists that they are intelligent? This study explores that question: “Telling People They Are Intelligent Correlates with the Feeling of Narcissistic Uniqueness: The Influence of IQ Feedback on Temporary State Narcissism,” Marcin Zajenkowski [pictured here] and Gilles E. Gignac, Intelligence, vol. 89, November–December 2021, 101595. (Thanks to Abel Dean for bringing this to our attention.) The authors are at the University of Warsaw, Poland and the University of Western Australia ..read more

The special ANTS & AUNTS (volume 30, number 3, May/June 2024) issue of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research has just gone out to subscribers. Even if you are not a subscriber you can read several of its articles online free ..read more

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Money reunited — Chung To Kong found a way, in the spirit of unboiling an egg (Feedback, 10 September 2022), to make banknotes from shredded banknote pieces…. The big bite — Highly educated humans are trying to discern what happened in the earliest moments of two momentous events: a bite of chocolate and the birth of the universe. Maria Charalambides at Imperial College London and her team have been beavering at the bite mystery, much as many physicists have be ..read more

Cuteness can be powerful on a national level and also internationally, according to this study: “Soft Power: ʻCute Culture’, A Persuasive Strategy in Japanese Advertising,” Oana-Maria Bîrlea, TRAMES, A Journal Of The Humanities And Social Sciences, 2023, pp. 311–324. The author [pictured here] explains: “The article addresses the ways in which soft power is used in Japanese advertising, both domestic and abroad. After the challenges brought by the end of World War II, Japan finds as a means of recovery the export of a new type of culture, focused on values different from the traditional ones a ..read more

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Blood spatter on high — “Be prepared!” This enduring motto of the Scout movement will come to mind for many readers of a paper called “Bloodstain pattern dynamics in microgravity: Observations of a pilot study in the next frontier of forensic science”. Reader Sara Rosenbaum alerted Feedback to the explicitly stated first purpose of the research: “the investigation of eventual violent criminal acts that occur outside of Earth’s environment”. This is forensic sci ..read more

“I once performed an autopsy on a deceased pedestrian who had been wearing 23 layers of clothing. It took us longer to undress him than to perform the autopsy.” —from the book Risking Life for Death, by Ryan Blumenthal (Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 2023). Here is a brief video of the author describing a different kind of case — someone struck by lightning ..read more

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Boxing: thinking outside — From time to time, the sport of boxing changes its rules. But for the most part, it still requires that each participant in a match be both human and alive. (Exceptions do occasionally pop up – kangaroos are the heavyweight exemplars.) Joseph Lee at Flinders University in Australia has explored a way to expand boxing’s rigid traditions. He outlines his thinking in a study in the journal Ethics and Philosophy called “Thinking outside t ..read more

Robert Gaskins, co-inventor or PowerPoint, highlights Doug Zongker‘s “Chicken Chicken Chicken” as one of his favorite ever PowerPoint presentations. This a videorecording of Doug Zongker’s talk in the Improbable Research session at the February 2008 AAAS meeting, in San Francisco ..read more

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Chasing the tale — Silvia Leonetti and colleagues in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, the US and Denmark don’t quite explain why dogs wag their tails, but they do explain that it is hard to explain. In a paper called “Why do dogs wag their tails?” in Biology Letters, these dog-tail contemplators confront one, presumably easier, sub-question… Donald Duck dam jubilee — We are just a year away from the jubilee – the 50th anniversary! – of the publication of t ..read more

Coffee smell can be enhanced in reliability and intensity, suggests this study, by adding coffee smell from used coffee: “Improvement of Robusta coffee aroma by modulating flavor precursors in the green coffee bean with enzymatically treated spent coffee grounds: A circular approach,” Cyril Moccand, Aditya Daniel Manchala, Jean-Luc Sauvageat, Anthony Lima, Yvette Fleury Rey, and Arne Glabasnia, Food Research International, vol. 170, August 2023, article 112987. The authors explain: “Spent coffee grounds (SCG) are by-products obtained from the industrial process of instant coffee production or ..read more