The Ig Nobel Prizes

 STEM Can Be Fun!

   It is still too bright out to be blogging. I need to post something for paying subscribers, however, and for those who stay inside because they are worried about UV rays, or because it is Friday the 13th.  Although I won't have to do much work, this post will keep you busy, especially if you watch the attached video which will take you a couple of hours. I wouldn't post anything that long if it wasn't funny.

   To learn about the Ig Nobel Prizes see my post from seven years ago about "The Nobel Prizes."  Cleverly concealed, along with the "Igs", you will find information about such things as, The Annals of Improbable Research and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. As well, make sure to check the bonus, "The Order of the Golden Fleece."
   This week, the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held at MIT. One of the winners from 2021 is pictured above. He was hung upside down in a study designed to see how rhinos reacted when hung upside down. This year some of the winners include: 
"Demography: Saul Justin Newman, for discovering that people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death record keeping.

Biology: Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk."

    B. F. Skinner finally won an award for a paper done in the 1960s on “the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide their flight paths,” (let's hope the folks at Boeing read it.) The award was accepted by his daughter, who threw her cap into the crowd.
   If you still need more incentive to read my old post, I will add that it also included a short review of the book, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond. If it is CANCON you are looking for, see the chapter in that book which is on "Farting and Belching." 
   The video of the ceremony is found here. I forgot to mention that the winner receives 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.

P.S.
As mentioned, the ceremony was hosted by MIT. If you are still trying to avoid the sun, or something else, see the post in MM about "MIT Press" where you can read something from their "Essential Knowledge Series," to make up for the time you squandered here.

   

MIT Press

    Additional Aids for Autodidacts

    My last post about University Presses was provided back in June (see: "Wolverines, Spartans and Books.") Before that, I offered you entertaining entries which were designed for lone wolf learners who wish to tackle tough subjects from their recliners.  For example, in early 2019 I helped you make some "Intellectual Resolutions" by suggesting that you could bone up on weighty subjects by reading the slim books in the "Very Short Introduction...series produced by Oxford University Press, or the even shorter ones in the "30 Second Books" offered by Ivy Press. That was followed during the dog days of August by "More Aids for Autodidacts" which discusses Yale's "Why X Matters Series" and the "Little Histories" which will make you appear to know a lot. Now you will learn about another university press series which offers a short cut to enlightenment.

                                          Essential Knowledge Series

  

   I suppose one could quibble a bit about what constitutes "Essential Knowledge", but I will not, since"MIT" stands for the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" and the folks typically found there are much more knowledgeable than I. This is what they say about this series:

“The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers accessible, concise, beautifully produced books on topics of current interest. Written by leading thinkers, the books in this series deliver expert overviews of subjects that range from the cultural and the historical to the scientific and the technical. In today's era of instant information gratification, we have ready access to opinions, rationalizations, and superficial descriptions. Much harder to come by is the foundational knowledge that informs a principled understanding of the world. Essential Knowledge books fill that need. Synthesizing specialized subject matter for nonspecialists and engaging critical topics through fundamentals, each of these compact volumes offers readers a point of access to complex ideas.’

  Ninety-two titles are currently listed in categories ranging from Architecture to Technology. Two are found under "History" and they are: Hunting: A Cultural History and Nuclear Weapons. There are thirteen related to "Political Science." Some are highly topical: 

Here are some other samples: 

Whiteness, by Martin Lund.

"The socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness: how it was created, how it changes, and how it protects and privileges people who are perceived as white.

"This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness, tracing its creation, its changing formation, and its power to privilege and protect people who are perceived as white. Whiteness, author Martin Lund explains, is not one single idea but a shifting, overarching category, a flexible cluster of historically, culturally, and geographically contingent ideals and standards that enable systems of hierarchical classification. Lund discusses words used to talk about whiteness, from white privilege to white fragility; the intersections of whiteness with race, class, and gender; whiteness in popular culture; and such ideas as “colorblindness” and “reverse racism,” which, he argues, actually uphold whiteness."

Hate Speech, by Caitlin Ring Carlson.

"Hate speech can happen anywhere—in Charlottesville, Virginia, where young men in khakis shouted, “Jews will not replace us”; in Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to target the Muslim Rohingya; in Capetown, South Africa, where a pastor called on ISIS to rid South Africa of the "homosexual curse.” In person or online, people wield language to attack others for their race, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or other aspects of identity. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines hate speech: what it is, and is not; its history; and efforts to address it.

Author Caitlin Ring Carlson, an expert in communication and mass media, defines hate speech as any expression—spoken words, images, or symbols—that seeks to malign people for their immutable characteristics. Hate speech is not synonymous with offensive speech—saying that you do not like someone does not constitute hate speech—or hate crimes, which are criminal acts motivated by prejudice. Hate speech traumatizes victims and degrades societies that condone it. Carlson investigates legal approaches taken by the EU, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Africa, and the United States, with a detailed discussion of how the U.S. addresses, and in most cases, allows, hate speech. She explores recent hate speech controversies, and suggests ways that governments, colleges, media organizations, and other organizations can limit the spread of hate speech."

   

   As you will see from the samples I have chosen, the books in this series offer "Essential Knowledge" about "topics of current interest." Some of them may prove to be more ephemeral than essential, but they will be useful nonetheless. 

Sources:

  The books in the MIT "Essential Knowledge" series can be found here.

   MIT publishes many other books. See mitpress.mit.edu. 

   One topic included is "Content", which seems like a rather amorphous subject to me. To see what the author is up to, look at this essay by her which is adapted from Content, by Kate Eichhorn: " "Content" Erases Wall Between Fact & Fiction," Kate Eichhorn, Public Books..." 8/2/22. 

The Bonus: 

   I mentioned "dog days" above, which has more to do with astronomy than with dogs panting in the hot sun. See: "Here's Why We Call This Time of Year the 'Dog Days' of Summer," Becky Little, National Geographic, July 16, 2021.
"These punishingly hot summer days get their name from an ancient belief about the brightest star in the sky—not from dogs’ tendency to laze around in the heat."

The History of Everything (Revisited)

    Just about a year ago, I provided to you a list of books to get you through the pandemic. It included books about a wide range of historical subjects, to which I appended a sub-list that cleverly offered suggestions for every letter of the alphabet. I will now add a few more since it is snowing. 

The Prostate

   I will begin at the bottom. There is a new book about the history of the prostate. Male readers who are still reeling from my post about the Castrati, may want to wait a few minutes (or weeks) until I come up with something else. 

   I have often posted about university presses and this book is from one of them: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book is by Ericka Johnson and the title is The Cultural History of the Prostate. Here is what it is about, which is more than just the gland:

"What contemporary prostate angst tells us about how we understand masculinity, aging, and sexuality.

We are all suffering an acute case of prostate angst. Men worry about their own prostates and those of others close to them; women worry about the prostates of the men they love. The prostate—a gland located directly under the bladder—lurks on the periphery of many men's health issues, but as an object of anxiety it goes beyond the medical, affecting how we understand masculinity, aging, and sexuality. In A Cultural Biography of the Prostate, Ericka Johnson investigates what we think the prostate is and what we use the prostate to think about, examining it in historical, cultural, social, and medical contexts.

Johnson shows that our ways of talking about, writing about, imagining, and imaging the prostate are a mess of entangled relationships. She describes current biomedical approaches, reports on the “discovery” of the prostate in the sixteenth century and its later appearance as both medical object and discursive trope, and explores present-day diagnostic practices for benign prostate hyperplasia—which transform a process (urination) into a thing (the prostate). Turning to the most anxiety-provoking prostate worry, prostate cancer, Johnson discusses PSA screening and the vulnerabilities it awakens (or sometimes silences) and then considers the presence of the absent prostate—how the prostate continues to affect lives after it has been removed in the name of health."

   These days I should quickly add that I am not at all, in the very least, upset that Ericka has appropriated a male subject. If you are, here is a review of the book by a male. He is also a primary care physician in Edinburgh and he has fingered more than a few prostates. He recommends the book and some others and I recommend his review since, among other things he describes the damn thing and lets us know what it does, or is supposed to do, until we get old:

"You can feel the prostate through the thin wall of the rectum, about a finger’s length inside the anus. Visualizing it isn’t easy: imagine a tiny doughnut that sits just under the bladder. Urine passes through the hole in the middle. The usual size comparison (for a young man’s healthy prostate) is that of a walnut. I count the prostate as normal when it’s soft, smooth, symmetrical, with a groove running vertically down the middle, and not jutting back into the rectum.

The gland has a variety of functions. It secretes between a quarter and a third of the fluid that constitutes semen—most of the rest is produced in the seminal vesicles—and its muscular elements contract at ejaculation to expel semen into the urethra and out of the body. It operates as a kind of junction box or valve that controls the flow of fluids, ensuring that urine doesn’t pass out to the testicles during urination and that semen doesn’t go up into the bladder during ejaculation. It helps protect against urinary tract infections, and for some men it’s an erogenous zone.

The tissues of the prostate are sensitive to circulating levels of testosterone, which stimulate it to grow, and so the prostate increases in size throughout life as long as the testes continue to produce that hormone. Prostate cancers, because they’re made of prostatic tissue, usually grow in response to testosterone as well. By the age of seventy, up to three quarters of men have prostatism (some degree of prostatic obstructive symptoms), which in its more severe forms entails poor urinary flow, difficulty initiating urination, dribbling after urination, and nocturia (having to get up at night to pee). These can all be caused by the gradual growth of prostatic tissues and resultant pressure on the bladder, as well as the tightening of the space through which urine has to pass. To widen this channel and improve flow, a surgical procedure called transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) is commonly carried out on older men."

From: "Intimate and Invasive," Gavin Francis, The New York Review of Books, Feb. 10, 2022.

The Bonus: 
   If you are interested in the history of a related subject - Underwear - head to Kenosha which was the home of the Kenosha Klosed Krotch design which "had a seat design of two pieces of fabric overlapping in an "X" to allow access for sanitary and hygienic purposes and not requiring the use of buttons or ties.” More can be learned at Jockey.  Since that is not much of a bonus, I will mention that Orson Welles was born in Kenosha and that it used to be the home of the Society For the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (now located in Nashville) and that Nashes used to be made there. Remember that I told you about 268 new ones that were lost in a shipwreck: The Lost Nashes of Halloween.

The History of Surgery
  If you would prefer to no longer focus on the prostate, you can learn about surgical procedures more generally in this new book written by a surgeon which "reveals the fascinating history of surgery’s evolution from its earliest roots in Europe through its rise to scientific and social dominance in the United States." Here is a review of it, but the title may put you off a bit: "Boiling Oil, Red-Hot Irons, 26-Second Amputations: How Surgery Evolved- Ira Rutkow's Empire of the Scalpel is by Turns Fascinating and Ghastly," Henry Marsh, New York Times, Mar. 4, 2022. Some of the "ghastly" is evident from this paragraph:
Perhaps this explains why progress in surgery has sometimes been erratic. Rutkow quotes surgeons in the mid-19th century who argued against anesthesia on the outrageous grounds that pain was necessary for healing. But many others adopted anesthesia very quickly, including Robert Liston, a leading surgeon in London. In order to minimize the suffering of his un-anesthetized patients, he had perfected the art of amputating a leg in minutes. It is said — although this might be apocryphal — that he had once accidentally severed his assistant’s fingers along with the patient’s leg, both the assistant and the patient dying afterward from postoperative sepsis (as well as a spectator who died from shock).

The History of Sweat

 Our last addition to the "History of Everything" is this book by Bill Hayes: Sweat: A History of Exercise. In it, 
"Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats and downward-dogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise, chronicling how they have evolved over time and dissecting the dynamics of human movement." 
The review from the Guardian is positive:
“Libraries, like gyms,” he writes, “have always been a refuge for me, just as gyms, like libraries, have always been places of learning.” There is a playfulness in Hayes’s writing, which reaches from a rich topsoil of endearing wordplay (“pas de dads”, he calls the sight of two middle-aged men playing squash) to the deepest layers of curiosity and empathy. He takes a profound, historian’s pleasure in tropes that echo across centuries – “The ancient Greek word for ‘gym rat’… literally translates as ‘palestra addict’”, to build an enthusiasm it’s impossible not to share."
"Sweat by Bill Hayes - A History of the Physical That Gets Personal," Zoe Williams, Jan. 28, 2022.

It has stopped snowing so I had better move on.

Factlet (7)

Conundrum Along the Charles

   The last factlet for this year is this one: In order to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology you have to pass a swim test. After making it through the admission process and completing four years as a double-major in aerospace and planetary science, you still are required to plunge into the pool. The covid has created quite a conundrum since one can't go swimming. 

   Apparently mandatory swim tests were introduced because of the many drownings during World War II. While the test is no longer a requirement at many universities, one still has to pass it at some of the Ivies. Cornell, Dartmouth and Columbia decided to waive the tests because of covid.
   MIT didn't. Instead one has to take a "conceptual swim test." Some students found the class, which stretches around four hours in one session, grueling -- especially since swimming the actual test would normally take about 10 minutes.

   If you are an MIT freshman with a fear of the water you may be thinking about taking the aquatic Zoom class. But, the officials have ruled that only seniors can take the virtual version.

The Bonus: Nudity at the Ivies

   Years ago incoming freshmen (and women at some of the affiliated Seven Sisters colleges) were required to be photographed naked. This meant that a large number of photos of the nation's most elite members were found piled in stacks on campuses in New England. 

Sources:

   I am sure you are most interested in the nudity. All you need is this Wikipedia entry:  "Ivey League Nude Posture Photos." More details are found here: "The Naked Truth About Yale's Posture Problem."

The pictures ended up at the Smithsonian and were destroyed in 1995.

   About the swimming see: "At MIT, Swim Like Your Degree Depends on it - Covid Sends School's Famous Aquatics Requirement Online," Jem Bartholomew, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 30, 2020.

   For an example, see Cornell's swim test requirements. 

   I don't know what the swimming situation is like at Canadian universities, but I did find that if one wants to swim in the deep end and use the Tarzan rope in the Trent Athletics Centre, a test is required.

The First Factlet: What's A Gee-Gee. 

I am not sure if one has to swim at the 'Canadian Ivies'.