Improbable Research

Society needs a tool for removing stubborn nuts. And thanks to William R. Lamphere, society has one. Here’s the patent:

“Tool for Removing Stubborn Nuts,” William R. Lamphere, US patent #4446622, issued May 8, 1984.

This medical case report shows an exception to the old saying that “laughter is the best medicine”:

“Laugh-Induced Seizure: A Case Report,” Naba Raj Mainali, Leena Jalota, Madan Aryal, Torrey R Schmidt, Madan Badal, Richard Alweis [pictured here smiling but not laughing], Journal of Medical Case Reports, 2013, 7:123. The authors, at Reading Health System in West Reading, Pennsylvania, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and  Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, report:

“A laugh-induced seizure is an unrecognized condition and to the best of our knowledge no case has been reported in the medical literature until now…. A 43-year-old obese, Caucasian man with a past history of insomnia, bipolar disorder and  chronic headache presented with multiple episodes of seizures; all were induced by laughter. He had had several mild seizures in the month prior to admission, induced by laughter when he was watching comedy shows on the television. Each episode lasted approximately five to 10 seconds. In each instance, he started laughing, then his arms started shaking and he felt like ‘his consciousness was being vacuumed away’… He had had a variable number of seizure episodes; five times a day on average, based upon the length and intensity of the comedy shows.”

BONUS [probably unrelated]: Laughter at the Supreme Court

This study explains gambling in a way no other study has managed:

“Souls/Soles of Signs — Tell Totems and the Sphinx Wager,” Darryl A. Smith, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Center for Gaming Research Occasional Paper Series #13, January 2012. The paper identifies its author in these words: “Darryl A. Smith, M.Div., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Pomona College and Affiliate of the Intercollegiate Department of Africa.”

The paper begins with this summary of itself:

“ABSTRACT: This paper develops a philosophy of play through an analysis of the foot wager of the Sphinx. Applying a construction of the cosmology of Plato along with a Socratic etymology of her riddle’s answer, it provides a reading of Sphingian contestation consistent with contemporary practices of deception found in modern games like poker. I argue that such deception is constitutive of the excessive illumination of signaling tells in games and that such excess, in turn, is indicative in allied political contexts of a covetous and acquisitive obsession with light. This theory makes use also of Ralph Ellison’s refiguring of Oedipal play as a theory of tyranny and serves as a riposte to the psychoanalytic idea of the Oedipus complex.”

The groundwork for research into the occurrence of laughter at the US Supreme Court was initially provided by Professor Jay D. Wexler (of Buffalo University) in his 2005 article for Green Bag (second series, Volume 9, number 1) entitled : “Laugh Track”. The professor had made the decision to quantify the laughter content because :

“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,

The beginning of a news report on the Wicked Local web site, in Massachusetts:

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