“In the 2004–2005 term [...] for the first time, the Court Reporter started revealing the names of the speaking Justices. Because the Court Reporter also indicates, with the notation ‘(Laughter),’ when the courtroom has reached a certain level of mirth, it is now possible to determine how many times during the term any particular Justice’s comments induced a substantial amount of laughter.”

The professor searched the records and kept track of the number of times that each Justice caused ‘hoots and snickers’ to erupt in the courtroom. He then calculated each Justice’s ‘Laughter Episodes Instigated Per Argument Average’ (LEIPAA), representing the total number of laughter episodes instigated over the term divided by the number of oral arguments attended over the course of the term. The data revealed the following results :

“Justice Scalia won the competition by a landslide, instigating 77 laughing episodes, while Justice Thomas instigated zero laughing episodes, putting him all alone in last place among the Justices.”

A year on, the Supreme Court Laughter Research Project was considerably extended by Jason Wojciechowski, in his paper for the Social Science Research Network : [Laughter.] on the Supreme Court: Expanding on Professor Wexler’s ‘Laugh Track’

“Rather than merely counting the number of laughs the various justices elicited from the gallery at the Court, I have also tallied the number of times those justices spoke up in oral argument overall, so that we can see, on a per-comment basis, who is actually funniest.”

The results :

“Justice Scalia is again the winner of the Court’s stand-up (sit-down?) comedy competition, averaging a laugh every 27.6 comments. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Breyer are bunched at the top with Scalia, averaging 38.6 and 31.8 comments per laugh, respectively.”

BONUS: An example joke from the records, from Justice Kennedy

“Recently I lost my luggage. I had to go to the lost and found at the airline, and the lady said has my plane landed yet.” (“Laughter”)

COMING SOON : ‘Uhming and erring’ at the Supreme Court.

[Many thanks to Mr. Wojciechowski for clarifications regarding his paper]

In Framingham, man caught with crack in buttocks

By Norman Miller/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted May 16, 2013 @ 12:01 AM

FRAMINGHAM — A Dorchester man who sold drugs hid a plastic bag full of crack cocaine in his buttocks on Tuesday, a prosecutor said Wednesday in Framingham District Court [pictured here].

Police arrested Dekara Anderson, 38, at 8:45 p.m. after a foot chase and being shocked twice with a Taser, prosecutor James Kerr said during Anderson’s arraignment….

(HT Adam K Olsen)

BONUS: Dekara Anderson wants you to be his pen pal

The contestants of the Ig Nobel 24/7 Battle (and their topics) are:
Prof. dr. Louise Vet (Nioo), topic: ‘ecologie’
Prof. dr. Menno Schilthuizen (Naturalis): ‘geslachtsorganen’
Prof. dr. Joost Frenken (Universiteit Leiden): ‘wrijving’
Prof. dr. Maurits Berger (Universiteit Leiden): ‘Sharia’
Prof. dr. Frans Willem Korsten (Univ.Leiden): ‘literatuur-wetenschap’
Prof. dr. Henkjan Honing (Universiteit van Amsterdam) [pictured]: ‘maatgevoel’

The time and word limits will be enforced by referee Maarten Keulemans, science editor of De Volkskrant.

This form of communication — the 24/7 Lectures — was invented at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, and has long been a featured part of that annual event. At the Leiden event, our European Bureau Chief (and winner of the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for biology) Kees Moeliker will explain the history of the 24/7 Lectures and of the Ig Nobel Prizes.

Where & when: Raamsteeg2, Raamsteeg 2, 2311 PL Leiden, the Netherlands; May 28, 2013, Tuesday, 8:00 pm (doors and bar open 7:30 pm).
Tickets: Euro 7,50 pay at the door (to reserve seats: mail raamsteeg2@gmail.com, and state ‘Ig Nobel 24/7 Battle’ + number of seats)

The new study is:

“Malaria Infected Mosquitoes Express Enhanced Attraction to Human Odor,” Renate C. Smallegange, Geert-Jan van Gemert, Marga van de Vegte-Bolmer, Salvador Gezan, Willem Takken, Robert W. Sauerwein, James G. Logan [pictured here], PLoS ONE, 8(5): 2013, e63602.

“There is much evidence that some pathogens manipulate the behaviour of their mosquito hosts to enhance pathogen transmission. However, it is unknown whether this phenomenon exists in the interaction of Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto with the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum – one of the most important interactions in the context of humanity, with malaria causing over 200 million human cases and over 770 thousand deaths each year. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, that infection with P. falciparum causes alterations in behavioural responses to host-derived olfactory stimuli in host-seeking female An. gambiae s.s. mosquitoes. In behavioural experiments we showed that P. falciparum-infected An. gambiae mosquitoes were significantly more attracted to human odors than uninfected mosquitoes…

“Considering the high degree of anthropophily of An. gambiae s.s. females and the practical and effective use of human foot odor in vitro, human foot odor was collected on a nylon matrix as described previously (20 Den panty sock, HEMA, The Netherlands, worn during 20 hours prior to the day on which the bioassay was performed by a male volunteer of whom the relative attractiveness to An. gambiae s.s. compared to 47 other men is known).”

The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for entomology was awarded to Bart Knols (of Wageningen Agricultural University, in Wageningen, the Netherlands; and of the National Institute for Medical Research, in Ifakara Centre, Tanzania, and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna Austria) and Ruurd de Jong (of Wageningen Agricultural University and of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Italy) for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet. That work included:

• “On Human Odour, Malaria Mosquitoes, and Limburger Cheese,” Bart. G.J. Knols, The Lancet, vol. 348 , November 9, 1996, p. 1322.
• “Behavioural and electrophysiological responses of the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae (Diptera: Culicidae) to Limburger cheese volatiles,” Bulletin of Entomological Research, B.G.J. Knols, J.J.A. van Loon, A. Cork, R.D. Robinson, et al., vol. 87, 1997, pp. 151-159.
• “Limburger Cheese as an Attractant for the Malaria Mosquito Anopheles gambiae s.s.,” B.G,J. Knols and R. De Jong, Parasitology Today, vol. 12, no. 4, 1996, pp. 159-61.
• “Selection of Biting Sites on Man by Two Malaria Mosquito Species,” R. De Jong and B.G.J. Knols, Experientia, vol. 51, 1995, pp. 80–84

Much of the reportage and commentary about this has not explicitly mentioned the earlier experiments. See, for example the BBC’s “Malaria parasite lures mosquito to human odour” and ScienceNow’s “Stinky Feet Smell Sweet to Malaria-Infected Mosquitoes“.

(Thanks to investigator Neil Judell for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: Video of Bart Knols vividly describing some of the malaria mosquito / stinky feet research, at TEDx Maastricht:

“Narcissism is a Bad Sign: CEO Signature Size, Investment, and Performance,” Charles Ham, Nicholas Seybert [pictured here] and Sean Wang, March 19, 2013, UNC Kenan-Flagler Research Paper No. 2013-1. The authors explain:

“Using the size of the CEO signature on annual SEC filings to measure CEO narcissism, we find that narcissism is positively associated with several measures of firm overinvestment, yet lower patent count and patent citation frequency. Abnormally high investment by narcissists predicts lower future revenues and lower sales growth. Narcissistic CEOs also deliver worse current performance as measured by return on assets, particularly for firms in early life-cycle stages and with uncertain operating environments, where a CEO’s decisions are most likely to impact the firm’s future value. Despite these negative performance indicators, more narcissistic CEOs enjoy higher compensation, both unconditionally and relative to the next highest paid executive at their firm.”

Harvard Business Review interviews the middle author.

A press release confirms the importance of the research.

(Thanks to investigator Erwin Kompanje for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: A different Charles Ham looks at the writings — but not the writing — of the poet Ovid

“The dating mind: Evolutionary psychology and the emerging science of human courtship,” Nathan Oesch and Igor Miklousic, Evolutionary Psychology, vol.10, no. 5, 2011, pp.  899-909.   The authors, at the University of Oxford and the Institute of social sciences Ivo Pilar, write:

“In the New York Times bestselling book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (2006), the world was granted its first exclusive introduction to the steadily growing dating coach and pick-up artist community. Many of its most prominent authorities claim to use insights and information gleaned both through first-hand experience as well as empirical research in evolutionary psychology. One of the industry’s most well-respected authorities, the illusionist Erik von Markovik, promotes a three-phase model of human courtship: Attraction, building mutual Comfort and Trust, and Seduction. The following review argues that many of these claims are in fact grounded in solid empirical findings from social, physiological and evolutionary psychology.”

(Thanks to Martin Robbins for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: Neil Strauss, author of the book analyzed in this study, displays his knowledge:

“A review of some attacks on the overkill hypothesis, with special attention to misrepresentations and doubletalk,” Gary Haynes, Quaternary International, 169–170 (2007) 84–94. Professor Haynes, at the University of Nevada, Reno, and who is president of the INQUA Commission on Humans and the Biosphere (formerly Commission on Palaeoecology and Human Evolution), explains:

“This paper addresses misrepresentations and errors in attacks directed against the Overkill hypothesis that was proposed by Paul Martin to explain selective late Pleistocene extinctions. The opposing Climate-Change hypothesis to explain extinctions is driven by ideology as much as by objective reasoning because it is repeated so frequently without strong new evidence to support it, but it has failed to nail down a victory in public opinion. Overkill, which is not an anti-climate-change hypothesis, is perhaps too ‘‘flexible’’ to persuade all scientists, especially because negative evidence (a lack of megafaunal killsites) is considered to be as corroborative as positive evidence….”

A new line of research examines what happens in an office where the positions of the cubicles and walls—even the coffee pot—are all determined by data.

…For instance, what if office coffee machines moved around according to the social context? When a coffee-pouring robot appeared as a gag in TV commercial two years ago, I thought seriously about the uses of a coffee machine with wheels. By positioning the coffee robot in between two groups, for example, we could increase the likelihood that certain coworkers would bump into each other. Once we detected—using smart badges or some other sensor—that the right conversations were occurring between the right people, the robot could move on to another location. Vending machines, bowls of snacks—all could migrate their way around the office on the basis of social data. One demonstration of these ideas came from a team at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom. In their “Slothbots” project, slow-moving robotic walls subtly change their position over time to alter the flow of people in a public space, constantly tuning their movement in response to people’s behavior.

BONUS: “Time-and-Motion Man and The Mad Inventor“

“Strudels manifesting time scales of five to fifteen seconds appear to emerge vertically, across scale, from irregular faster frequencies of 100 Hz or greater.”

The strudels, pictured above :

“ … can be interpreted as neurophysiological correlates of the spontaneous intrusions into consciousness of the never idle unconscious mind.”

The strudels appear as turbulent-looking disturbances in the scans, leading to radical ideas for their possible analysis :

“In recent fundamental physics, vacuum fluid fluctuations at the Planck length scale and emergent hierarchical turbulent dynamics have been invoked in a radical new theory of reality. We might use this new ‘turbulence theory of everything’ to justify the use of turbulence mathematics to characterize the dynamics of the brain’s magnetic fields.”

There is more work to be done, however, in pinpointing the strudels’ relation to what Freud called the unconscious (Ucs) and the conscious (Cs) mind.

“The question concerning whether the strudels and entropies of brain information bearing, magnetic fields are Cs itself or reflections of intermittent daydreaming intrusions into it by the Ucs remain.”

BONUS: The authors give an example of a Freudian Slip.

“A Freudian slip occurs when you mean one thing, but you say your mother.”

The full paper is available via the Cielo Insitute, see : Daydreaming, Thought Blocking and Strudels in the Taskless, Resting Human Brain’s Magnetic Fields AIP Conf. Proc. 1339, pp. 7-22; INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLICATIONS IN NONLINEAR DYNAMICS (ICAND 2010)Date: 21–24 September 2010 Location: Alberta, (Canada)