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IRS taxes science(since 1949) |
The miracle of modern statistics is now lying at your fingertips
Do not miss the opportunity to behold the World's First
Absurd WWW Counter
operated jointly with the University of Absurdistan.
Grants awarded to IRS in the fiscal year 1999
ZOOLOGY
One of the reasons scientists claim that there is no life on Venus is that
allegedly most animals (and certainly most mammals) cannot survive high
temperatures prevailing on its surface.
Well, our institute made a series of experiments
with dogs and it turned out
that they can be quite heat-resistant when properly
instructed. The first experiment didn't turn out very well, since the dog
Haryk I. jumped into the furnace prior to being given a safety training.
Even though the rescuers did their best, Haryk I. burned to death at 1200K.
The following experiments were a big success though, and currently the record
is held by the bullterrier named Haryk VIII., who survived
the blazing inferno of 1650K for 10 minutes.
The future plans for this project include sophisticated use of
protective coats made out of banana peels that should enhance the class of
heat-resistant
animals to include cats, racoons,
golden fish, buffalos and chimpanzees. Human volunteers are welcome too.
Rescue of Haryk I.
Emotional life of cows
It is a known fact in Absurdistan, that domestic animals have a rich emotional life. As a matter of fact, horses that are divorced are not allowed in traffic any more, since their distress has caused a number of accidents. A zoology group in the IRS has focused on cows recently and claims that happy cows produce better milk with less cholesterol that cows that are stressed out or overworked. The whole experimental area between Ja'rov and Rio Bio is now dotted with farms that keep their cows extra happy. The cows have their own comedians, TV shows (such as "Married...with calves", "Milk Stalkings" or "Barn Improvement"), psychologists, amusement parks with state-of-the-art rollerwagons, Mexican restaurants and other amenities that keep their spirits up. No wonder their milk is highly priced and contributes a great deal to the IRS revenue, together with other products such as "Happy Cheese", "Smiling Yogurt" or "Sweet Sour Cream".
Happy Cows during the 1994 "Miss Butt" pageant. The cow on the left
is one of judges.
(picture by
P.D.Asprey)
Frog Balance (at last!)
New simulation models for the growth of Absurdistan's frog population revealed that the actual number of living frogs in Absurdistan's almost pristine environment should be about seven times the number of all frogs that have actually been observed. Upon disclosure of this shocking discrepancy, the senior research biologist, Dr. Zabka, conjectured that most frogs living in Absurdistan are the so called "dark frogs" that cannot be seen. These "dark frogs" are, however, important part of the food chain and IRS urges citizens not to kill these bizarre creatures. If you see nothing jumping in the darkness, don't mess with it. It may be a living explanation of the biggest frog-population deficit in the history of zoology. Dark frogs can in principle mate with visible frogs, the result usually being the transparent tadpoles, but such encounters are rare and even if such tadpoles do evolve into frogs, these become an easy prey for hunters, what with their transparent skin being a highly desired material in a multi-billion industry of see-through handbags.
ASTRONOMY
The Hubble telescope doesn't exist. The satellite carrying it was originally
designed to transmit soap operas into Europe. However, after
the failure of one of the mirrors (whose purpose was to reflect the images
sent from Hollywood directly into Europe) all the major networks decided to
cover the scandal up by giving the satellite purportedly scientific goals.
Since then the world astronomic community is deluged by pictures that
come either from the telescope on Mt. Palomar or are downright hoaxes
like the infrared picture of wedding rings of Michael Jackson and Lisa
Marie Presley which is widely circulated
as a picture of some very distant galaxy!
The astronomer, who supposedly discovered this galaxy was convicted on 32
counts of compulsive rib-nudging earlier this year.
Allegedly "Supernova 1987A"
GASTRONOMY
It is a common misconception that pizza comes from Italy. The truth is,
however, that pizza comes from outside of our solar system. In 1947
a spaceship loaded with pizza crashed near Roswell, NM and, according
to experts, the US government got hold of about 3450 pounds of superb pizza.
This spaceship was a part of humanitary aid sent to Earth from Proxima
Centauri. In 60s, due to a security leak, pizza got out of the Pentagon
(intending to use it as a supplemental nutrition for the US Army) and soon
reached the European shores and Italy. The ProximaCentauri spaceship
was loaded not only with finished pizzas, but also with many ingredients
such as ham, pepperoni, mushrooms, tomatoes and green peppers. After the crash,
caused by a loose pretzel jamming the central navigation radar,
many eyewitnesses reported little green men falling out of the spaceship.
We now know that these "men" were just a bunch of
little green peppers rolling down the
hill from the crashsite.
PHYSICS
Archimedes Law is incorrect. A body immersed in a fluid IS NOT buoyed
up by a force that is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced.
A team of physicists from IRS discovered recently, that the abovementioned
force equals only to 99.99973417% of the weight of the displaced fluid.
This amazing discovery was made possible by a series of experiments with
specially constructed "giant bubbles" which were immersed in the Fake Lake,
near the University of Absurdistan campus at Kocourkov.
The bubbles were transported to the experiment site
in huge tanks filled with olive oil so that their spherical shape,
crucial for the accuracy of the experiment, was preserved. On the picture
below, we can see first of the long trail of trucks, carrying the precious
bubbles.
Transport.
MATHEMATICSThanks to a grant from ASF (Absurdistan's Science Foundation) IRS is now home to the largest collection of straight lines in the world. This exposition illustrates how the concept of the straigh line was evolving throughout the centuries in both the Western and Eastern civilizations. The oldest lines in the collection come from the Greek manuscripts. They are neither very long, nor very straight, nevertheless they allowed Euclid to formulate many valuable results from planar geometry. The straightest line comes from Sevres in France and it is 2.28 meters long with the standard forward deviation of only 0.00000000037%. The longest line in the collection is the so-called line "p1", donated by an American millionaire Jack Davis in 1928. The line is 328 meters long and extremely thin. On the other hand, the thickest line is a piece of the dividing line from Route 66. It is 19.4 cm thick and together with the supporting concrete it weighs well over 2.6 tons. The collection also includes telephone lines, parallel lines, rail lines and assorted rulers.
Fermat's Last Theorem
Fermat didn't postulate his "last theorem". He didn't care that much about solutions of Diophantine equations. But he did care about certain practical problems because he was an avid amateur carpenter. One day he was trying to cut a wooden cube into two smaller cubes (not necessarily of the same volume). First, he tried to solve the problem just by one cut, but no matter how he turned his saw, the result was always some weird looking prisms or pyramids. He tried horizontal, vertical, diagonal and skewed cuts, later even finite combinations of the above, but never obtained two cubes as a result of his sawing. Finally he gave up and wrote on the margin of his sawing manual:"...it is impossible to cut a given cube into two smaller cubes. I found a marvelous proof of this fact, but the margin of this manual is too narrow to contain it." So much for his infamous conjecture. The actual Fermat's Last Theorem as we know it today was a mere exercise which Euler found in some obscure number theory textbook, couldn't prove and was ashamed to admit it.
Existence of even numbers
Even numbers don't exist in the physical sense.
Or to be precise the only even number is 0.
Other so called even numbers (like 2,4,6,...) are a mere construct
of mathematicians. First of all, even numbers do not exist in physical
reality. The fact that when you add one orange to one orange you seemingly
see two oranges can and should be explained by a macroscopic quantum
phenomenon called a "particle-particle delta colorblind hardwood
nerves duality". It is an optical delusion
that our eyes interpret this phenomenon as seeing two objects. Likewise
when we add 5 oranges to 3 oranges we get only 7 oranges even though
our eyes seem to see what we usually call 8 oranges.
Similarly, even numbers do not exist in mathematics. For instance how do we
know that 5+9=14? Because we memorized it at school. In fact 5+9=13.
The reorganization of arithmetic will be painful, but without it
further technological progress will be almost impossible. It is interesting
to notice that the first to acknowledge the non-existence of even numbers
were car dealers. Have you noticed that cars don't usually cost $8000
or $12,000 but rather $7999 or $11,995? That's because dealers wouldn't ask
the public to pay prices that don't exist - that would ruin them.
Another zone of truth are fairy-tales where odd numbers (such as 3,5,7,9)
occur in abundance, while you almost never
hear about 8 dwarfs or 4 princesses. Indeed, who would have the nerve
to lie to kids and boggle their minds with non-existing numbers?
We'll end this paragraph with one piece of good news: recent super-computer
experiments in Los Alamos confirmed the existence of
all previously predicted odd numbers with the
possible exception of 11,313 so
we'll still have plenty of numbers to play with.
Don't worry.
Even though the non-existence of even numbers was recently rigorously
proved by the math department of IRS, many people still believe in them.
As a matter of fact, the Secret Police discovered a chemical plant
manufacturing tons of plastic even numbers for commercial purposes.
Needless to say, that the plant was burned down. On the picture
we see a heroic fireman fighting with the figure "8" set ablaze.
He uses sugarless chewing gum "Dentyne" to cool his mouth.
The hero in action
Linguistic studies in the fiscal year 1999
The Rhyming Words Project
The Uni-Voweled Geographical Names Project.