IgNobel Awards

[mifencer]

It's always good to see when the world can stop and laugh at itself.

From physorg.com:
Scientists who answered questions such as why woodpeckers don't get headaches, whether dung beetles like their diet and if rectal massage can cure hiccups have at last been recognised for their work.

The IgNobel Prizes, a tongue-in-cheek alternative to their more formal Scandinavian counterparts, were presented by genuine Nobel prizewinners late Thursday at an annual ceremony at Harvard University.

The two-hour ceremony was geek-turned-chic as scientists traded their labcoats for tuxedoes and roared with laughter whenever someone uttered the word "inertia" -- the evening's theme.

"This is probably the only place in the world where fractal geometry gets applause," said audience member Bill Card.

Ivan Schwab of the University of California Davis and the late Philip May of the University of California Los Angeles received the ornithology prize for their pioneering work on the ability of the humble woodpecker to avoid head injury.

Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University and Faten Al-Mussalam of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority, took home the nutrition prize for showing that dung beetles are in fact finicky eaters.

Winners had one minute to deliver acceptance speeches, with the time limit strictly policed by an outspoken eight-year-old girl.

Audience members bucked new security regulations intended to curb an IgNobel tradition: throwing paper aeroplanes. Over the course of the evening hundreds were hurled at the stage, where Harvard physicist Roy Glauber dutifully swept them up, as he has for the last 10 years.

Glauber joined the ranks of Nobel laureates in 2005 but still insisted on retaining his sweeping duties for the 16th annual ceremony this year.

Despite the gala's irreverent tone, the awards are taken increasingly seriously in the scientific community, with eight of the 10 winners this year paying their own way to attend the ceremony.

One of those unable to attend the ceremony for family reasons was Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, who was awarded the peace prize for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant.

The device makes an annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults. He later used the same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers.

Three American scientists, Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand, won the acoustics prize for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

Audience members squirmed as Nobel laureates recreated the jarring sound using handheld slates and gardening tools.

And two researchers from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation received the maths prize for working out how many photos you need to take to ensure that nobody in a group photo has their eyes closed.

Not to be overlooked, Francis Fesmire of the University of Tennessee accepted the medicine Ig in person for his report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."

In his acceptance speech, Fesmire recalled booking a trip to Stockholm upon first learning of the award -- only to realize later that he wasn't receiving a Nobel but rather an Ig.

"My first reaction was shock, then depression," Fesmire joked, waving at the audience with a rubber glove on his hand.

Physics laureates Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of Paris University were honoured for their insights into why dry spaghetti tends to break into more than two pieces.

And while the conclusions of a group of scientists from Valencia University and the University of Illes Balears in Spain were not immediately clear, the judges deemed their study "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature" worthy of the chemistry prize.

Also honoured for cheese research, Bart Knols from Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands won the biology award for his part in research showing that female malaria mosquito are equally attracted to limburger cheese and human feet.

"Beat malaria, eat limburger," Knols said in his acceptance speech.

Former winners who participated in the ceremony were Don Featherstone, creator of the plastic pink flamingo, Kees Moeliker, who reported the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, and Stefano Ghirlanda, co-author of the study "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans."

In his closing remarks, host Marc Abrahams sent recipients home with a backhanded compliment: "If you didn't win an Ig Nobel this year, and especially if you did, better luck next year."

© 2006 AFP

[gtmac]

Not to be overlooked, Francis Fesmire of the University of Tennessee accepted the medicine Ig in person for his report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."

Do you think this might also work to get people to stop fencing epee?


...or might they just enjoy it?

[seven6ty]

Ya wanna know what we use to administer rectal massages to foilists with?

[needle]

Originally Posted by seven6ty

Ya wanna know what we use to administer rectal massages to foilists with?

sabreur jackets? ... since they are the only objects in the known Universe that smell worse than foilist rectums ...

[scrapinpeg]

It took a scientific study to show that limburger is the equivalent of stinky feet?

I'd be willing to bet that the original limburger culture was created by some monk with poor hygiene stepping in the curds.

[mifencer]

I liked the "teenage repellant" idea.

[telkanuru]

Originally Posted by needle

sabreur jackets? ... since they are the only objects in the known Universe that smell worse than foilist rectums ...

See if you did a double-blind study to confirm that, you'd be getting an award