Customer Reviews

Sex as a Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble: More of the Best of the Journal of Irreproducible Results (And Further Improbabilities : More of the Best of the Journal of Irreproducible Results)

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This book is largely a collection of silly experiments--likethe testing of bricks for infectious diseases, or the reactions ofcats to photographs of men with various styles of beards--written up in the style of a scientific research paper, complete with footnotes. Most of the material is written in a very dry, technical style, which is exactly what makes it so funny--_if_ you're a scientist, or if you've at least been exposed to scientific journals in the past. If you do not fall into this category, you'll be left wondering what could possibly be the least bit funny about this nonsense; so if you're buying this as a gift, choose your recipient very carefully.

If you're interested in this book, you should also have a good look at The Best of Annals of Irreproducible Research; it's a collection of the same sort of material, and I found it to be a bit funnier than this collection. Both are very worthwhile to the right audience.

While I guess that I like this book, I don't really think that it's up to the lofty standards of 'The Journal of Irreproducible Results' or the latter day 'Annals of Improbable Research'. In this volume there are several wonderful articles such as "Preserving the Grand Canyon: Final Report" in which the author proposes filling the Grand Canyon with Styrofoam peanuts of various types, and "A Decade of Burnt Food" by the founder and curator of the Museum of Burnt Food. Unfortunately, the real gems here are relatively few and far between, and occasion the articles get into heavy-handed political criticism, especially in the Ig Nobel Prizes section, which I found to be inappropriate, irrelevant to science generally, and a put off.

Fundamentally, "The Best of Annals of Improbable Research", with many of the same cast of characters is a by far funnier (and genuinely science driven) book than this one, so for my money, between the two, I would go for "The Best of Annals of Improbable Research" without hesitation. The primary difference between the two is a matter of degree: both show science at its most ludicrous, and both use bizarrely convoluted 'experiments' (actual or imagined) and brazen misinterpretations to make for amusing pseudo-scientific reading. "The Best of Annals of Improbable Research", though, is much more rigorously scientifically based, whereas most of "Sex as a Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble" is mostly simple fiction in scientific garb. Yes, it is still funny, but given the wealth of articles published over the years in 'The Journal of Irreproducible Results' it could have been much, much funnier. I would recommend a subscription to the 'Annals of Improbable Research' magazine or a copy of "The Best of Annals of Improbable Research" instead of this book. Normally I think both AIR and JIR are too short, and I can't get enough. With "Sex as a Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble", I just wanted to get the book over with.

As an avid reader of the "Best of JIR" books for many years, I didn't find this volume nearly as roll-on-the-floor funny as previous volumes. However, there are some real gems in here.