Antigravity and Chicken Tikka Masala

Wordsmith.org

For those of you who have been wrestling laboriously with logic, here's something that should make you feel better ...

I can't remember where I got it from, but it makes me smile every time I read it:

An American magazine held a competition, inviting its readers to submit new scientific theories on ANY subject. Below are the winners:

5th place (Subject: Probability Theory)
If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare in Braille.

4th place (Subject: Bio-Mechanics)
Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalise the pressure on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your head unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they then yawn to even it out.

3rd place (Subject: Symbolic Logic)
The Chinese are technologically underdeveloped because each of their alphabetical characters represents a whole word or phrase, rather than a single letter. Thus they cannot use acronyms to communicate technical ideas at a faster rate.

2nd place (Subject: Newtonian Mechanics)
Deforestation may cause earthquakes, tidal waves, or even the total destruction of our planet. Just as a figure-skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to the body, the cutting down of tall trees may cause the Earth to spin dangerously fast on its axis with disastrous results.

Winner (Subject: Perpetual Motion)
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands buttered side down. Therefore, if a slice of toast is strapped to a cat's back, buttered side up, and the animal is then dropped, the two opposing forces will cause it to hover, spinning inches above the ground. If enough toast-laden felines were used, they could form the basis of a high-speed monorail system.

... and then this reply was received from one of the recipients:

�I've been thinking about this cat/toast business for a while. In the buttered toast case, it's the butter that causes it to land buttered side down - it doesn't have to be toast, the theory works equally well with Jacob's crackers. So to save money you just miss out the toast � and butter the cats. Also, should there be an imbalance between the effects of cat and butter, there are other substances that have a stronger affinity for carpet. Probability of carpet impact is determined by the following simple formula:

p = s * t(t)/t(c)

where p is the probability of carpet impact, s is the "stain" value of the toast-covering substance - an indicator of the effectiveness of the toast topping in permanently staining the carpet.

Chicken Tikka Masala, for example, has a very high s value, while the s value of water is zero.

t(c) and t(t) indicate the tone of the carpet and topping - the value of p being strongly related to the relationship between the colour of the carpet and topping, as even chicken tikka masala won't cause a permanent and obvious stain if the carpet is the same colour.

So it is obvious that the probability of carpet impact is maximised if you use chicken tikka masala and a white carpet - in fact this combination gives a p value of one, which is the same as the probability of a cat landing on its feet. Therefore a cat with chicken tikka masala on its back will be certain to hover in mid air, while there could be problems with buttered toast as the toast may fall off the cat, causing a terrible monorail crash resulting in nauseating images of members of the royal family visiting accident victims in hospital, and politicians saying it wouldn't have happened if their party was in power as there would have been more investment in cat-toast glue research.

Therefore it is in the interests not only of public safety but also public sanity if the buttered toast on cats idea is scrapped, to be replaced by a monorail powered by cats smeared with chicken tikka masala floating above a rail made from white shag pile carpet.�

http://www.askachef.com/recipe/recipeDetails.cfm?RecipeID=1052

tsuwm: I was unable to google up an on-line copy of Asimov's parody, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". But I did find it cited in your wwftd, so perhaps you can provide a link?

"The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" has been republished at least as recently as 1980 so is probably still under copyright. (I tried to find it when I used 'endochronic'.)

does anyone have a recipe for Chicken Tikki Masala

Apparently, this is now the most popular meal in Britain. However, it's not Indian in origin - it was invented in an Indian restaurant somewhere in the UK as being something that was "exotic", yet appealing to British taste.

That's the story, anyway. I heard it on the BBC, so it must be true

Here's the Chicken Tikka recipe:

http://www.askachef.com/recipe/recipeDetails.cfm?RecipeID=1037

You gotta do the cubing yourself.

I can't give you the reference - it must be the Fifties, or maybe even the late Forties, well before Google et al. - but I can tell you what it is, according to Asimov:

Thiotimoline is a substance that reacts strongly with water. Like sodium, only more so. Indeed, when thio-t. and water touch, the reaction is so cataclysmic that both of them vanish in mutual annihilation - thirty seconds before the moment of contact !

Now _that's_ violent !

And speaking of dubious science, has anybody seen/can anybody find the brief report from Arthur D. Little Company about "The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry"? It too dates from the Fifties-give-or-take-ten-years, and is worthy of being revived periodically...

(Is the Journal of Irreproducible Results still published?)

Is the Journal of Irreproducible Results still published?

They never could get the second issue out.

Asimov's work on thiotimoline is in the book Only a Trillion

http://homepage.mac.com/jenkins/Asimov/Books/Book024.html

it must be the Fifties, or maybe even the late Forties

It must be quite early, because he wrote it to practice the "turgid" style that he felt necessary for his PhD thesis. It was published before his interview and he was quite nervous, because he was afraid that the interviewer would have read it and consider him to be too frivolous to be awarded such an august honour. They reached the end with no mention of it, much to Asimov's relief, but just as he thought it was all over, the interviewer said: "One final question: what can you tell me about resublimated thiotimoline?".

The full tale and the actual story are in, I think, "Nightfall and other stories". It's been a long time since I read it, so my memory might be hazy there.

both of them vanish in mutual annihilation

I thought it was just that it dissolved before it hit the water, rather than any violent reaction. It was because thiotimoline supposedly possessed an inordinate number of hydrophilic bits (hydroxyl groups and so on). The reaction was probably highly exothermic (as well as endochronic), but I don't think annihilation (a la matter-antimatter) was involved.

Memory being imperfect, I may be wrong in some or all of the details...I guess we need to check to original source :-)

original source :-)

so back to Tikka Masala, are we?

Yoda contributes: It was published before his interview and he was quite nervous, because he was afraid that the interviewer would have read it and consider him to be too frivolous

As I remember it, he had asked that the article on thiotimoline be published under a pseudonym but the publishers messed up and published it under his real name.

Good memory on the details, Yoda. See my link to Only a Trillion, above (or below depending on whether you are a flatliner or a threadnodist) for the source.

As I remember it, he had asked that the article on thiotimoline be published under a pseudonym but the publishers messed up and published it under his real name.

Now you mention it, that's what I remember. As I said, it was a long time ago - I wasn't sure if he'd asked for publication to be delayed or a pseudonym used. I'm sure there are other details I've forgotten.

Time to get up to the loft and start ransacking the boxes of old books (I never throw a book away - horror!)

Memory being imperfect, I may be wrong in some or all of the details...I guess we need to check to original source :-)

I think I remember correctly - it stuck in my mind because I'd just finished my biochemistry degree when I read it and as we all know, the good Dr A. was a biochemist.

However, I have been certain (and wrong) before.

Is the Journal of Irreproducible Results still published?

Yes, it is. Their website is brief, but includes a few samples of the works. I know this
because I recently had a paper accepted by this esteemed journal: "Career Trajectories of Tattooed Women."
It's a hermeneutic study conducted in a Starbucks in Portland, Oregon.

Is the Journal of Irreproducible Results still published?

Yes, it is.

Well, there goes their credibility. It's like someone getting elected President of the Procrastinators' Club. What kind of procrastinator would get around to joining in the first place??!!

It's like someone getting elected President of the Procrastinators' Club

Or like the guy (I forget his name) who wrote "The Book of Heroic Failures". The book was a success and he got kicked out of the club.

it must be the Fifties, or maybe even the late Forties, well before Google et al.
1948; see the link Faldage provided. Unfortunately, that link gives only a review, not the full text. Other url's (per brief googling), though also lacking full text, give a bit more of the flavor.

but I can tell you what it is, according to Asimov:
w-doc, my recall differs on some important details. Perhaps there as two or more spoofs, involving variants of the mythical substance?

Perhaps there as two or more spoofs

My Clementian memory does have his writing more than one version of this as well as several commentaries. The first was very scholarly in tone and was written in 1948 while he was still a Mr. Later versions came later. Go ahead. Make something of that. I'm a trained Fool. I can handle it.

Thiotimoline is a substance that is capable of being refined to varying degrees of purity. The more pure it is the longer it can go without combining with water. When the scientist first discovered the compound it was very impure, but he noticed that it seemed to dissolve before it actually got into water.

He then made some a little more pure and put it on a shelf in a glass container. When it came time for the thiotimoline to dissolve it caused the shelf to fall, with the result the bottle broke on a wet floor.

As the time lines became longer, the scientist devised new hurdles. In one of them he put the stuff in a safe, resulting in a flood which brought water to the thiotimoline. It was eventually used as a weapon. Think of putting thiotimoline in a strongbox at a remote location in Afghanistan!

I assume that everyone here has heard of Marc Abraham's "Annals of Improbable Research" (AIR). I subscribe to the overflow email verion, "mini-AIR". It's hilarious and largely true. If anyone wants to have a look, try this:

To subscribe, send a brief E-mail message to:
LISTPROC@AIR.HARVARD.EDU
The body of your message should contain ONLY the words
SUBSCRIBE MINI-AIR MARIE CURIE
(You may substitute your own name for that of Madame Curie.)

I cut and paste the above bit from the last one received a week ago.

http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=17813&page=2
1&view=collapsed&sb=5