Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Tonight

Ellen Spertus writes "The Eleventh First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will be held in Cambridge, MA, on Thursday, Oct. 4, to honor scientific achievements that cannot, or should not, be reproduced. The ceremony, which will be webcast live and broadcast later on Science Friday, is sponsored by The Annals of Improbable Research. The accompanying Ig Informal Lectures will be held Saturday, Oct. 6, at MIT."

Comments

The 2000 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

[Anonymous Coward]

Loved those winners of 2000:
CHEMISTRY
"Romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder."

COMPUTER SCIENCE
"Detecting when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard."

Of course I always knew the first one, so it's quite useful to tell people who are "in love", dunno about the later.

ObJoke

[imipak]

scientific achievements that cannot, or should not, be reproduced.

I nominate:

• Windows XP
• Microsoft Mediaplayer
• MS SQL Server
• Last year's winner: IIS, up for a record four years in a row!

Cat typing detector? I want one!

[JaredOfEuropa]

I need to stop my damn cat from making all these "first post" posts! Yes, now you know where they come from.

Re:Similar prize for software?

[mav[LAG]]

Some of the past results would have made great slashdot stories, how about: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for
inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower."


Far from being a whacky burglar alarm, the device you mention was originally actually an anti-hijack device. Johannesburg is the carjacking capital of the world. I have been resident here for over ten years and I can truthfully say that if you yourself haven't been hijacked then a member of your family or a friend has if you live in this town. I personally have had two attacks in my own driveway, my wife was the victim of an attempt and my father was hijacked and then kidnapped for over four hours.

Most carjack attempts happen at traffic lights or outside your home. The robbers' modus operandi is to walk up to your car door brandishing a weapon - normally a 9mm or an AK-47. Sometimes they just shoot first, drag your body out the way and dump it before driving off. It's impractical to reach for a weapon yourself in these situations since a) you're sitting down and b) your seatbelt is often in the way.

Solution: press a button (the original method of activation) and your would-be murderers get themselves horribly crisped by a sheet of burning hydrocarbons. Sounds damn good to me.