Fitting for Halloween...
Oct. 31st, 2006 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazliyaSo, as they are this time every year, the IgNobel awards for 2006 have been presented.
For those of you who don't know what they are, an excerpt from Wikipedia:
"The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." Organized by the scientific humor journal Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University.
The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991, at that time for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced." With the exception of three prizes in the first year (see Administratium, Josiah Carberry, and Paul DeFanti), the Ig Nobel Prizes are for genuine achievements.
The awards are sometimes veiled criticism — as in the two awards given for homeopathy research, or prizes in "science education" to Kansas and Colorado state boards of education for their stance regarding the teaching of evolution — but most often draw attention to scientific articles that have some funny or unexpected aspect. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell, to research on the "five-second rule," a tongue-in-cheek belief that food dropped on the floor won't become contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds."
So, I give you:
--} This year's laureates{--
Enjoy. I particularly like the biology and peace prizes this year.
One of my favorites from 2005:
PEACE: Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University, in the U.K., for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie "Star Wars."
Whoever reads it, post your favorites here!
-Haz
For those of you who don't know what they are, an excerpt from Wikipedia:
"The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." Organized by the scientific humor journal Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University.
The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991, at that time for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced." With the exception of three prizes in the first year (see Administratium, Josiah Carberry, and Paul DeFanti), the Ig Nobel Prizes are for genuine achievements.
The awards are sometimes veiled criticism — as in the two awards given for homeopathy research, or prizes in "science education" to Kansas and Colorado state boards of education for their stance regarding the teaching of evolution — but most often draw attention to scientific articles that have some funny or unexpected aspect. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell, to research on the "five-second rule," a tongue-in-cheek belief that food dropped on the floor won't become contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds."
So, I give you:
--} This year's laureates{--
Enjoy. I particularly like the biology and peace prizes this year.
One of my favorites from 2005:
PEACE: Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University, in the U.K., for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie "Star Wars."
Whoever reads it, post your favorites here!
-Haz
