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IgNobel Awards
how_would_i_know writes: "I've always suspected there was a coconut conspiracy... now there's proof. :-)" We might as well follow-up on our earlier story with a list of the IgNobel Winners. Stalin World! A study of glee! And of course, a true breakthrough, the solution to the shower curtain mystery.
Ok, I bet he only patented the ROUND wheel.
I'll patent the wheel composed of a high number
of flat sides arranged as a regular polygon.
That'll get him....
All this time I've been thinking I was a freak, it turns out I'm just suffer from Rhinotillexomania. Gross activities seem so much more benign once you stick a scientific name on them. Now I just need to do something about all the crud stuck to the underside of my desk.
Just goes to show you that no matter what you say to people, they're going to walk around without crash helmets! If it were Canada, there would already be legislation, perimeter fences around the coconut trees, and big wind blocks to prevent the coconuts from being blown off the trees.
This is a preventable accident, and measures should be taken to halt these needless coconut injuries!
"Group glee doesn't happen alone."
Gosh, how insightful! Never in a million years would I have known that group glee cannot happen when you're alone!
Stalin, while relaxing in a tropical amusement park, picking his nose, was struck by a coconut, prompting a brilliant idea! He immediately dragged his car (he couldn't get any wheel's, because they were patented) to his workshop and made a set of airproof underpants. He considered using charcoal filter's to absorb fart's, but because it would have to be changed, he instead leveraged his recent singularity research to create a small, contained black hole.
To test them, knowing that adult's might be too polite to be honest or too dignified to participate, he gathered together a group of children. The test's were held in a shower to handle any accidents that might result from forced farting. It worked brilliantly. The children tried them in turn's, and not an unpleasant whiff escaped.
For a final test, Stalin tried them on himself and stepped into the shower and strained with all his strength. Unfortunately, his mighty blast destabilized the black hole, causing him and the shower curtain to be sucked into it. At first thinking it all part of the fun, the children were overjoyed at the spectacle.
He was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize posthumously, though this is likely no consolation as he is presumed to live in an eternal hell of contained fart's.
(I swear it sounded like a good idea when I started writing...)
OK, where the hell is my grant???
The truly comic touch to this comes from IP Australian (the federal government agency which granted the patent in the first place) says...
"Don't reinvent the wheel. Searching worldwide patent information can help you avoid wasting time and money duplicating work done elsewhere"
(from here)
Candygram for Mongo!
This one is great. Some of you might have seen it before:
>The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington
>Chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the
>professor shared it with his colleagues. Bonus Question: Is Hell
>exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the
>students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools off
>when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One
>student, however, wrote the following: First, we need to know how the
>mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls
>are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can
>safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore,
>no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look
>at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these
>religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will
>go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since
>people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all
>souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect
>the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the
>rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in
>order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the
>volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This
>gives two possibilities: 1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the
>rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell
>will increase until all Hell breaks loose. 2. If Hell is expanding at a
>rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and
>pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept
>the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year, "that it will
>be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the
>fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her,
>then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and
>will not freeze. The student received the only "A."
From the Australian government patent site Searching patent information page:
"Don't reinvent the wheel. Searching worldwide patent information can help you avoid wasting time and money duplicating work done elsewhere."
I'll patent fire!
Claim 1: A process for the production of heat by the chemical combination of oxygen with solid, liquid, or gaseous substances.
Claim 2: The reduction in volume or weight of waste material by chemical combination with oxygen.
No, really. A square wheel will ride over a surface made of a series of half-circles (think: one long string of speedbumps) as if it were a round wheel going across a flat surface.