Hollywood isn’t the only town to recognize greatness. Last Thursday night the 16th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held at Harvard. The Ig Nobel Prize celebrates out-of-the-ordinary research that first make people laugh and then think. Mostly they’re thinking “who the hell signed off on these grants??”
Anyway, here are a few of this year’s winners along with my heartiest congratulations.
ORNITHOLOGY: Ivan R. Schwab and the late Philip R.A. May for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.
PHYSICS: Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch for their insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces.
PEACE: Howard Stapleton for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant -- a device that makes annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers.
ACOUSTICS: D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake, and James Hillenbrand for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.
MATHEMATICS: Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes for calculating the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed
LITERATURE: Daniel Oppenheimer for his report "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly."
And my personal favorite:
MEDICINE: Francis M. Fesmire for his medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage”.
6 comments :
Face it Levine, your career is complete now that you've successfully used the words "Digital Rectal Massage" in a sentence. It's all downhill from here, man.
I believe there may be some folk in West Hollywood who've tried that remedy for hiccups and found it preferable to holding your breath and drinking a gallon of water...
Yeah I think I'd just take the hiccups. Though I'm not so sure about the rest of my friends.
I've heard that a digital rectal message is much more accurate than the old analog type.
...and that's the good stuff. This morning, I produced the London segment of the podcast for New Scientist. Subject?
"Why Snot is Green"
Shoot me...
Good one, alaskaray!
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