The Nobel Prize committee has announced the 2010 Nobel Prize laureates for Physics. The honor will be shared by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". However, this is not the first physics prize for Andre Geim.

Congratulations to Andre Geim, new Nobel Prize winner in physics. He becomes the first to win, as an individual, both a Nobel Prize (this year, together with Konstantin Novoselov, for experiments with the substance graphene) and an Ig Nobel Prize (in the year 2000, shared with Sir Michael Berry, for using magnets to levitate a frog).

You can see a video of the levitating frog at Improbable Research. Link

A literary-technical tour de force, and the man behind it
by Marc Abrahams, Improbable Research staff




Philip M. Parker is the world’s fastest book author, and given that he has been at it only for about five years and already has more than 85,000 books to his name, he is likely the most prolific.

Philip M. Parker is also the most wide-ranging of authors. The phrase “shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings” is not the half a percent of it. He has authored some 188 books related to shoes, ten about ships, 219 books about wax, six about sour red cabbage pickles, and six about royal jelly supplements.

To begin somewhere, let’s note that Philip M. Parker is the author of the book The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in the United States. This book is 677 pages long, sells for $495 and is described by the publisher as a “study [that] covers the latent demand outlook for bathroom toilet brushes and holders across the states and cities of the United States.”

Philip M. Parker titles include the following (this is a hastily chosen few, so they are probably not his most colorful):

The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Rotary Pumps with Designed Pressure of 100 P.s.i. or Less and Designed Capacity of 10 G.p.m. or Less

Avocados: A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide

Webster’s English to Romanian Crossword Puzzles: Level 2

The 2007-2012 Outlook for Golf Bags in India

The 2007-2012 Outlook for Chinese Prawn Crackers in Japan

The 2002 Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Cataract Surgery

The 2007 Report on Wood Toilet Seats: World Market Segmentation by City

The 2007-2012 Outlook for Frozen Asparagus in India

Professor Philip M. Parker, author of more than 300,000 books. Photo courtesy of INSEAD.

Parker: Who?

Philip M. Parker is the INSEAD Chair Professor of Management Science at INSEAD, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France.

Parker: What?

Professor Parker is no dilettante. When he turns to a new subject, he seizes and shakes it till several books, or several hundred, emerge. About the outlook for bathroom toilet brushes and holders, Professor Parker has authored at least six books. There is his The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in Japan, and also The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in Greater China, and also The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in India, and also The 2007 Report on Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders: World Market Segmentation by City.

Amazon.com offers (on the day I am writing this) 85,761 books authored by Philip M. Parker. Professor Parker himself says the total is well over 200,000.

How is this all possible? How does one man do so much?

Professor Parker created the secret to his own success. He invented a machine that writes books. He says it takes about twenty minutes to write one.

Parker: Why?

There arises the question, “Why?” The patent (U.S. #7266767), which describes a “method and apparatus for automated authoring and marketing” and which Professor Parker wrote in the traditional, pre-Parker, non-computerized way, answers this question.

The answer appears on page 16. Professor Parker quotes a 1999 complaint by the magazine The Economist that publishing “has continued essentially unchanged since Gutenberg. Letters are still written, books bound, newspapers mostly printed and distributed much as they ever were.”

“Therefore,” says Professor Parker in this patent document, “there is a need for a method and apparatus for authoring, marketing and/or distributing title materials automatically by a computer.” He explains that “Further, there is a need for an automated system that eliminates or substantially reduces the costs associated with human labor, such as authors, editors, graphic artists, data analysts, translators, distributors, and marketing personnel.”

Parker: How?

We asked Professor Parker how he manages this Herculean output. He replied:

I started back in 1992 with the idea. Had a lot of failures, then succeeded in 2000 when I filed the patent. I have amassed huge linguistics databases (I am an avid dictionary collector, since I was 18), and have a background in mathematics, and computer programming, so I have approached this from a management science perspective. Everything is organized by genre, and within genre by topic, and within topic by sub-topic, etc., for all languages. It is a matter of organization.

The book-writing machine works simply, at least in principle. First, one feeds it a recipe for writing a particular genre of book — a tome about crossword puzzles, say, or a market outlook for products, or maybe a patient’s guide to medical maladies. Then one hooks the computer up to a big database full of info about crossword puzzles or market information or maladies. The computer uses the recipe to select data from the database and write and format it into book form.

Professor Parker estimates that it costs him about 23 cents to write a new book, with perhaps not much difference in quality from what a competent wordsmith or an MBA or a physician might produce.

Nothing but the title need actually exist until somebody orders a copy, typically via an online automated bookseller. At that point, a computer assembles the book’s content and prints up a single copy.

Professor Parker’s patent document includes this schematic overview of the automatic authoring process.

Best-Selling Books

Among Professor Parker’s best-selling books (as ranked by Amazon.co.uk) one finds surprises.

His fifth-best seller is Webster’s Albanian to English Crossword Puzzles: Level 1.

No. 6: The 2007 Import and Export Market for Ferrous Metal Waste and Scrap Excluding Waste and Scrap of Cast Iron and Alloy Steel in United Kingdom.

No. 21: The 2007 Import and Export Market for Seaweeds and Other Algae in France.

No. 25: Oculocutaneous Albinism—A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients, and Genome Researchers.

No. 44: The 2007 Import and Export Market for Fresh or Chilled Whole Fish in Lithuania.

The 2007-2012 Outlook for Chinese Prawn Crackers in Japan, mentioned above, is Professor Parker’s 66th-best seller.

This graphic overview shows the human consumer in the context of the automatic authoring process.

In the 93rd spot comes The 2007 Report on Cat Food: World Market Segmentation by City.

Rounding out the list, at number 100, is The 2007-2012 Outlook for Edible Tallow and Stearin Made in Slaughtering Plants in Greater China.

Professor Parker is also enthusiastic about books authored the old-fashioned way. He has already written three of them.

The books are in a way just the beginning. Professor Parker also plans to use the same method to produce video programs—thousands upon thousands of them—and video games. He tells us:

If I am lucky, this will allow the creation of content (educational material, books, software, etc.) for languages (or for subject areas) that simply do not have enough speakers, or economies that can support traditional publishing or content creation. For example, in health care, some diseases have fewer than 1,000 people who get the disease worldwide per year. Of those, only 1 or 2 might want a reference book. Using this method, the break even for a book is 1 copy, with no inventory cost (all books are either printed on demand, or distributed via ebook). Some languages have only 100,000 speakers, so no “Hollywood” producer would envisage creating programming to such a narrow audience, etc. This approach allows for this level of production (I am starting with an educational game show, and 3D personal computer games).

This flowchart, part of the patent document, discloses a further level of detail for parts of the process.

For More Parker

For a vivid introduction to Professor Parker and some of his works, see the video he has put online.

For a few more of Professor Parker’s memorable books, see the article “May We Recommend: Parker Titles,” elsewhere in this issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. Also elsewhere in this issue is “Dr. Parker’s Latent Library and the Death of the Author,” a discussion of the philosophical implications of Professor Parker’s accomplishments.

(Thanks to Peter Carboni for bringing the first toilet brush outlook book to our attention, and to Chris McManus for alerting us to the several hundred medical books.)

_____________________

The article above is from the March/April 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Are you familiar with the exploits of the Bayside Tigers from the TV show Saved by the Bell? The athletic teams were featured in many episodes. Show off your smarts (or your memory) with today's Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss! I scored 60%, despite never having seen the show. Beat that! Link

James. J. Johnson drove his truck into a house in Webster, Massachusetts. He blamed the crash on the dogs running loose in his truck.

James. J. Johnson said the dogs make him lose control of his vehicle. But Webster police officers determined there were no dogs, police said.

Officers also determined Johnson had been drinking, police said. Johnson was charged with operating under the influence of alcohol, marked lanes violation, negligent operation of a motor vehicle and destruction of property.

One has to wonder what exactly made the police think that Johnson may have been drinking. Link -via Arbroath

You probably know by now that Twaggies are Tweets that are so funny they've been turned into comics. Founder David Israel and artist Kiersten Essenpreis are trying to ensure the future of Twaggies with a project on Kickstarter. Make a pledge and get a gift, from a link to your site ($5) to a t-shirt ($30) to custom illustrations and even a dinner date! Link

Artist Tom Thomson has been called "Canada's Van Gogh".  His death in 1917 remains Canada's greatest mystery. But there is some new information in the case, thanks to CSI-style forensic analysis.

The “truth” eluded Canadians for nearly a century, right back to July 16, 1917, when the missing painter's body surfaced on Algonquin Park's most famous lake – a bruise over his left temple, one ankle wrapped round and round with fishing line.That suspicious death – accident? murder? suicide? – and the subsequent question as to whether his body remained at Canoe Lake, where his friends had buried him, or had later been exhumed at the Thomson family's request and taken to Leith, Ont., has made Tom Thomson Canada's greatest enduring mystery, his famous works inextricably tied to his fate.

In 1956, a body was unearthed at the Canoe Lake cemetery that some thought might have been Thomson's, particularly because of the hole in the skull. Others said it was was a young aboriginal man who had undergone trepanation. Just this past year, modern technology was brought into the picture to determine just who the skull with the hole in it belonged to. Link -via Nag on the Lake

I realize that if you go peruse the NeatoHub, you're probably looking for more great links and you might not make it all the way down to the bottom of the page. I did, and was delighted by the artwork by Adam Koford (Apelad), so I thought you might enjoy it as well.

(YouTube link)

American football, especially between rival colleges, can be an incomprehensible spectacle to anyone outside the US. Stephen Fry reports:

Simultaneously preposterous... impressive, charming, ridiculous, expensive, overpopulated, wonderful, American.

Even funnier are the YouTube comments speculating as to what camera tricks were used in this video to make the game look so big. Link (embedded YouTube video)

LEDs are the way to use tons and tons of lights and still use very little electricity. Artists, sculptors, and architects use LEDs to create stunning light displays, like this one found at the Italian Light Sculpture Festival in Nanjing, China. See more pictures from the festival and other LED art projects at WebEcoist. Link -via Rue the Day

My Jello Americans is a blog dedicated to the art of the Jello shot. And I do mean art, as these shots can look like anything from an ear of corn to ice cream to fossil insects encased in amber! The flavor combinations are amazing as well, like shots that resemble bonbons flavored with absinthe and Black Sambuca. Link -via Breakfast Links

Take a look at this photograph from the early 20th century. It has not been retouched, nor is it a double exposure. It looks like a big face has been plopped into the middle of it, an example of pareidolia {wiki}, the tendency for human brains to interpret patterns as meaningful, like seeing a face when there is no face. For an explanation of what this photo really is, see the post at Historic LOLs. Link Update: Commenter MosselKots has images spelling out both ways of looking at this picture, in case that will help you see it. http://i851.photobucket.com/albums/ab74/mzzzl/Pareidoliaillusionfotohint.jpg

We've brought you some weird vending machines before, but this takes the cake! When you feel the need to buy gold, but don't want to drive all the way to the bank or to your broker, just use this handy dandy gold vending machine, from a business called GOLD To Go. The first one was installed earlier this year at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. Of course. Link -via Laughing Squid

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

A 12,000-year-old grave in Israel has touching evidence of the long, close relationship between humans and dogs. The grave contains a human skeleton whose hand rests upon the bones of a small puppy. Through the centuries dogs have given people loyalty, aid, and companionship. So what did people do to get such understanding and helpful friends? Well, actually, they created them themselves.

NEVER CRY WOLF

(Image credit: Flicker user ucumari)

Scientists have discovered 400,000-year-old wolf bones mingled with human bones. But they believe that the man and the wolf relationship goes back hundred of thousands of years before that. Early humans probably first used wolves as food; but the wolves would have also been using humans, scavenging through their garbage dumps and over time moving closer and  closer to the center of camp and the human's food source-the campfire. After a while, the gentler wolves were accepted by humans as part of the group.

Wolf packs and early human tribes had a lot in common. They were both willing to follow a leader, cooperate, and work together to protect members of their group. So, a wolf-human cooperation was natural-especially when it came to hunting.

Wolves began to follow humans when they went hunting. Wolves gave off cues when prey was around and humans soon figured out that wolves possessed a superior sense of smell and could detect prey at long distances. Man and wolf began to cooperate and eventually wolves became active participants and true partners with humans in the hunt for food.

AN EVOLVING PUPPY TALE

When selecting a wolf pal, humans naturally favored the most cooperative animals. They associated cooperative behavior with a puppylike appearance in an adult wolf and encouraged those animals to stick around. They also began picking out the most gentle, trainable puppies to raise.

(Image credit: Flickr user Paul Moody)

In effect humans replaced nature's selection process with a man-made one. And after thousand of years of human meddling-about 14,000 years ago-a new animal evolved. Thanks to domestication and their diet, these animals had smaller brains, heads, and teeth than wolves. We call them dogs. As wolves evolved into dogs, they became even more important to humans because of their usefulness and their companionship.

Dogs have always had a wide variety of size and body proportions, but about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, folks tinkered with Mother Nature in earnest to create specialized working and companion dogs. That's when the difference in breeds really began to emerge.

The Romans bred and trained working dogs and lap dogs. As breeding continued, dogs became more and more specialized. Herding dogs were bred to work with livestock. Sporting dogs were bred for bird hunting. Hounds were bred to hunt by scent or by sight.  Working dogs were bred to perform many tasks, including herding, hauling, and guarding. Terriers were bred to hunt rodents and other vermin. Toy breeds were bred to be companions and some of those were bred to be simply lap warmers.

DOGS OF WAR

(Image credit; Flickr user United States Marine Corps)

Alexander the Great was said to have helped develop a huge breed called Molossus, as a battle dog that could knock a man right off a horse. In the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors used kill-trained greyhounds and large Mastiff-type dogs against Native Americans and to assist in their conquest of the New World.

During the Civil War, dogs were used for sentry duty, to guard prisoners, and to accompany troops as mascots. In World War I, dogs were used to detect enemy forces, carry messages, search battlefields for wounded soldiers, and evacuate wounded soldiers by pulling small ambulance carts. Dogs also cheered up soldiers at the front lines and those wounded in hospitals.

During World War II, the United States really got serious about using dogs to protect its military and military-related property. Scout dogs were used to good advantage in Vietnam; they served double duty as security dogs. Mine-detector dogs and tunnel dogs were both trained during this conflict. Vietnam also saw the development of the tracker dog. Tracker dogs were used to hunt down the enemy.

The modern canine soldier is trained to save lives, not take them. American war dogs help our troops avoid potentially deadly encounters. They work as sentries on sensitive military installations, or lead their handlers to hidden caches of weapons, explosives, and drugs.

COP DOGS

(Image credit: Flickr user Thomas Hawk)

The organized use of dogs in law enforcement for the apprehension of criminals was established in the early 1900s. Working German shepherds became so good at helping law enforcement personnel that they were nicknamed "police dogs". The idea of using dogs for police work was largely brought about by the development of and organization of purebred dog clubs. The earliest examples of police dog programs were those in Germany, Belgium, and England.

EXCEEDINGLY WELL BRED

Dogs have been successful as a species because they have adapted well to the needs and desires of humans for loyalty, companionship, and assistance. Dogs and people communicate effectively through voice, body language, and facial expressions, though in many ways dogs are much better at understanding humans than humans are at understanding dogs.

Dogs and humans have a relationship that is based on mutual support. Dogs have a greater difficulty surviving on their own and a dog's dependence on humans make it a sensitive pal, cooperative and responsive to its owner's moods. Dogs are wonderful companions, they help people make a living, and they save lives. Man's best friend is even a healer, reducing stress and lowering blood pressure.

Dogs may be mankind's greatest accomplishment-the creation of a superior being. After all, a dog will never turn o you as long as you treat it right. The same can't be said about people.

*****

"Dogs look up to you. Cats look down on you. Give me a pig. He just looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal." -Winston Churchill

______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John's first plunge into history was a smash hit - over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

How many of these pasta shapes can you name? How many can you use in a recipe? This is a small sampling of the pastas listed at The Geometry of Pasta. Click on a shape and find out what to call it and how to use it in Italian meals. There are recipes as well. Link -via the Presurfer

Jason Lee is a wedding photographer, but his really creative side comes out when he shoots his adorable daughters. You'll find more pictures and an interview with Lee at My Modern Met. Link -via reddit