In This Is Improbable, Marc Abrahams made addictive, laugh-out-loud, literary art from the world's oddest and most unlikely research projects. As the "Improbable Research" columnist for the Guardian and founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes, Abrahams has amassed a fresh collection of screwball scientific and technological oddities serious enough to pique the intellectual curiosity of the average Joe. In This Is Improbable Too, he introduces readers to the engineer who used mathematical calculations to pinpoint the antichrist (he claims it's Mikhail Gorbachev, by odds of 710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1) and an Italian economist whose theory of human stupidity ("ignorance is bliss") was confirmed by Cornell scientists.
Abrahams also discovers evidence that crime doesn't pay ("an industrious robber can expect, statistically, to work steadily at his trade for only about a year and a half before being caught and canned"), that "nasal packing" with cured salt pork can stop nosebleeds, and that Botox reduces armpit odor. His final research stops include the old question of breast versus buttocks preferences for men in "Islands of Interest" and the role beans play in flatulence in "Overblown Beans."
The examples Abrahams highlights are so bodaciously "out there" and salacious that they seem to defy reality, escalating the reader's random chuckles into gut-wrenching guffaws. Like Uncle John's Bathroom Reader or an episode of Jeopardy, This Is Improbable Too delivers science as it might be most easily ingested--in small doses, one chapter of disbelieving hilarity at a time. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant