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Ig Nobel Awards 2003
prostoalex writes "The Ig Nobel awards for 2003 were presented at Harvard University. Hold your breath for the winners of this year's awards from Annals of Improbable Research. Engineering: the inventors of the Murphy's law. Physics: authors of 'An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces' report. Medicine: the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents. Psychology: authors of the 'Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities' report. Chemistry: a Japanese scientist who studied a bronze statue strangely ignored by pigeon population. Literature: the author of more than 80 scientific reports on amusing statistical information. Economics: the man, who viewed the entire country of Liechtenstein as a large convention center. Interdisciplinary: authors of 'Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans' study. Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above."
Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species
I always was suspicious of those damn mallards.. Their "Oh, I'm just an innocent duck" quacks and what not..
Trolling is a art,
I'm all about the Taxi drivers one.
the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents
Makes sense to me. They charge a small fortune to go a small distance, and we still pay it. : )
John Trinkaus, of the Zicklin School of Business, New York City, for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about specific annoyances and anomalies of daily life, such as: What percentage of young people wear baseball caps with the peak facing to the rear rather than to the front; What percentage of pedestrians wear sport shoes that are white rather than some other color; What percentage of swimmers swim laps in the shallow end of a pool rather than the deep end; What percentage of automobile drivers almost, but not completely, come to a stop at one particular stop-sign; What percentage of commuters carry attache cases; What percentage of shoppers exceed the number of items permitted in a supermarket's express checkout lane; and What percentage of students dislike the taste of Brussels sprouts.
That's what marketing people do when they do a market study!
That's so unfair. Beautiful people have an advantage in everything.
That was less of a "who wants to know?" study than a "Surely that has been proved already?" study...
/clothes/ made of that stuff dammit (and a car)! That's damn useful...
And what's wrong with studying statues that pigeons ignore? I want
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / xenogamous.com / transference.org / quantam sufficit ]
PEACE
Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for a triple accomplishment: First, for leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; Second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and Third, for creating the Association of Dead People.
Why do I h8 apple?
The 2003 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
The 2003 Ig Nobel Prize winners were announced on Thursday evening, October 2, at the 13th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre. The ceremony was telecast live on the Internet. (The winners will give free public talks on Saturday, October 4, at the Ig Informal Lectures, at MIT room 54-100.)
Click here for details.
ENGINEERING
The late John Paul Stapp, the late Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols, for jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law, the basic engineering principle that "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it" (or, in other words: "If anything can go wrong, it will").
REFERENCE: "The Fastest Man on Earth," Nick T. Spark, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 5, Sept/Oct 2003.]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: (1) Author Nick T. Spark , on behalf of John Paul Stapp's widow, Lilly. (2) Edward Murphy's Edward A. Murphy III, on behalf of his late father. (3) George Nichols, via audio tape.
PHYSICS
Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams of Australia, for their irresistible report "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces."
[PUBLISHED IN: Applied Ergonomics, vol. 33, no. 6, November 2002, pp. 523-31. A copy is available at http://www.culvenor.com/]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: John Culvenor.
MEDICINE
Eleanor Maguire, David Gadian, Ingrid Johnsrude, Catriona Good, John Ashburner, Richard Frackowiak, and Christopher Frith of University College London, for presenting evidence that the brains of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.
[PUBLISHED IN: "Navigation-Related Structural Change In the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 8, April 11, 2000, pp. 4398-403. Also see their subsequent publications.]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Eleanor Maguire.
PSYCHOLOGY
Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli of the University of Rome, and Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, for their discerning report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities."
[PUBLISHED IN: Nature, vol. 385, February 1997, p. 493.]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Philip Zimbardo.
CHEMISTRY
Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University, for his chemical investigation of a bronze statue, in the city of Kanazawa, that fails to attract pigeons.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Yukio Hirose.
LITERATURE
John Trinkaus, of the Zicklin School of Business, New York City, for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about specific annoyances and anomalies of daily life, such as: What percentage of young people wear baseball caps with the peak facing to the rear rather than to the front; What percentage of pedestrians wear sport shoes that are white rather than some other color; What percentage of swimmers swim laps in the shallow end of a pool rather than the deep end; What percentage of automobile drivers almost, but not completely, come to a stop at one particular stop-sign; What percentage of commuters carry attache cases; What percentage of shoppers exceed the number of items permitted in a supermarket's express checkout lane; and What percentage of students dislike the taste of Brussels sprouts.
REFERENCE: 86 of Professor Trinkaus's publications are listed in "Trinkaus -- An Informal Look," Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 3, May/Jun 2003.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: John Trinkaus.
ECONOMICS
Karl Schwarzler and the nation of Liechtenstein, for making it possible to rent the entire country for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings.
REFERENCE: and
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Karl Schwarzler.
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist
Believe it or not, they actually have pictures of the act as well. That's the Internet for you, nothing but pr0n.
in GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUin GNUSegmentation fault
...the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents
I think memorizing every single street in the city of London does make you pretty darn smart.
Though, London cabbies are certainly not short on opinions. Maybe memorizing every street also makes one think they know everything about anything.
Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.
Maybe not quite the juxtaposition that was intended.
"Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species."
Mallards! Dirty dirty mallards!
Sean: Whats the difference between a mallard with a cold and your mother?
Alex: I dont know
Sean: One is a sick duck...I dont remember the rest but your mother is a whore.
(apparently they are BOTH sick f@#$s
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
Wonder if he can refuse to pay bills, citing death as the reason.
Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.
" WERE linked above" that should read...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
I always knew that taxi drivers were freakish mutants, but now there's PROOF!!!
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.
And just why did you think we'd like to see actual pictures of said necrophilia?
Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site...
Great! Now, when people say the internet is too foul I can just point them to a love story about two fowls.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
'An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces'
Let me guess, these were Scottish researchers, right?
We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students). This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations.
I think you need to see if people prefer beautiful chickens before you can jump to that conclusion.
Ducks unlimited.
This article reads like a Slashback post on April 1st... I know I looked twice at my calendar when I read it. Twice this week, I've forgotten what day of the week it was - so maybe I'm more delusional that I thought.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
Hey, I consider it useful that Trinkaus discovered that woman in vans don't stop for stopsigns. I've never liked those minivan driving soccer moms.
Observations were made at the same 4 T-junction intersections in a residential community in the suburbs of a large northeastern city. Two characteristics were selected for viewing: type of vehicle and sex of driver. Data for 8 90-min observations suggest an overall compliance rate of about 6% with stop signs in a residential community. Women driving vans were the least compliant--approximately 1%.Link
I have blog like everyone else
Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species.
So much for sex being the most natural thing in the world. That sounds like a definition of "unnatural practices".
yes, we have no bananas
Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.
worst choice of words... EVER!
more! more! more!
Trinkaus -- An Informal Look (Part 8 of 10)
The guy who won literature prize is quite interesting. Check this out
(71) "The Demise of 'Yes': An Informal Look," J. Trinkaus, Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 84, no. 3, part 1, June 1997, p. 866. For affirmative responses to simple interrogatories, the use of "absolutely" and "exactly" may be becoming more socially frequent than "yes." A counting of positive replies to 419 questions on several TV networks showed 249 answers of "absolutely," 117 "exactly," and 53 of "yes."
Now you know what to do when you are watching TV shows. Just count how many times they use some other word for 'no' and you may win a prize!!
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
and think "Oh great, a whole new series of trolls.
To write a haiku - all you need is the correct - number of syli...
I'm suprised that SCO's McBride isn't on this list somewhere, for his spectacular achievement in Chemistry: Turning bullshit into gold.
There was also a study of sado-masochistic bestial necrophilia by jockeys, but it turned out the researcher was just flogging a dead horse.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
"Damn those AC karma whores..."
Ah, give 'em a break. After being modded down -1 Troll eighty thousand times, one post getting modded up isn't a biggie... *g*
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The thing I found amazing was that people actually showed up to accept their award! Never mind getting a grant to do research on necro-homo-mallards, or sheep dragging - that takes chutzpah!
Literature: the author of more than 80 scientific reports on amusing statistical information.
80 reports? That should be enough to write an 81st scientific report on amusing statistical information about these 80 reports.
i have done a significant amount of research in what kind of tissue serves masturbators best. my experimnets were based on hands-on research using a wide variety of commercially available varieties.
i hope to publish the results in time for the next ceremony. any pointers to conferences/journals are welcome. attleast somebody will acknowledge all my hard work.
Just in case there are any human necrophiliacs with a case of the 'featheries'.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
A: 15-20% is generally deemed acceptable. Grass is preferred over cash.
Q: Is it wise to use the words "dragging the sheep into position" in an article referenced on Slashdot?
A: Why not?
I'd like to see the result if the site wasn;t /.ed.
--- Ban humanity.
...not that there's anything wrong with that!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Yeah, the SAS guys are scary. I had an unfortunate run in with of them and his threatening owl once.
Is it me or did once you got past the word "Dutch" nothing behind that was likely to shock you. :)
I for one, welcome our chicken overlord to be the judge of the beauty contest.
On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass facade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an 'Attempted Rape Flight' that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.
75 MINUTES! Talk about not knowing when to quit! Not even a, "Honey, are you awake?"... sheeesh.
BTW, the pictures of the ducks are quite tasteful, while the beautiful chicken photos border on hard-core pornography.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
Q: Why do the Scotts wear kilts?
A: Sheep can hear a zipper a mile away.
"Honest officer, I was just trying to help this sheep over the fence..."
Who the hell modded this informative? It's funny! Mod this one up, it got a chuckle outta me.
It'a an active field of reasearch. A similar study found that the hippocampus of the chickadee increases by 30% in the fall when it needs to memorize the locations of all the food stores it is busily hiding,
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This isn't the real Nobel prize is it?
I don't think there is a nobel prize in psychology and stuff like that..
Will code a sig generator for food
NT
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Slow to load (slashdot effect) and I SO wanted to read about the homosexual necrophiliac mallard duck...
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Maybe because there is nothing wrong with them, and this IS a naturally occuring incident. There is nothing "moral" about persecuting someone based on sexual preference. I think you're confusing morality with right-wing christian facism. I guess it's easy to get confused like that with such a small and narrow mind. I haven't seen any "gay" lobbies ask for any sort of "special" rights, only the same rights given to any other american citizen. If you think they should have lessened rights because they are gay, then I'm ok with that, as long as you have lessened rights for being a complete idiot dumbfuck.
You find out that there is a whole subculture devoted to Mallard duck porn. I can imagine the trades on IRC, and the associated checklists:
Mallard Duck heterosexual copulation --check
Mallard Duck homosexual copulation --check
Mallard Duck heterosexual necrophiliac copulation -- check
Mallard Duck homosexual necrophiliac copulation --the holy grail
The study was biased as women (and left-handed men) were left out. Similar to the ducks.
...I've found that many geese like to dress themselves up as mallards and parade about. Don't get fooled like I did!
I'm sure he's just spending the year dead for tax reasons.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
if you haven't read it, the AIR feature on murphy's law is a great read.
If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else.
More of these awards sounded like real science to me this year than previous years. I wonder if that is because less weird science is being done, or because my opinion of what constitues real science is broadening.
One in particular is the statue ignored by pigeons. Many very important discoveries were preceded by some observation, with the remark: "That's strange..."
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard...
What was the thought process on that one?
Hmmm... That duck is humping a dead duck. I think I'll time it...
OK. He's done. I wonder what the gender is of that dead duck?
According to the artical on him, also among things that he has done in his life to set up these three events include "to prove that he was living sought arrest [he:] tried to run for parliament, kidnapped the son of the uncle who had stolen his property, threatened murder, insulted judges, threw leaflets listing his complaints at legislators in the state assembly and demanded a widow's pension for his wife."
So do get the peace prize now you have to add kidnapping and threat of homicide along with being dead. I guess I am out of luck!
Tolls and gas for the week: 20$
Lunch, drinks, and breath mints: 40$
Sitting in traffic for 10 hours a week: very mentally cotly$
Getting paid for time wasted reading pdf's on necrophiliac homosexual mallards: priceless
CHEMISTRY Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University, for his chemical investigation of a bronze statue, in the city of Kanazawa, that fails to attract pigeons. WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Yukio Hirose.
Isn't this precisely the way Penicillin was discovered by Fleming.
Help fight continental drift.
He reminds me somewhat of Cosmo Kramer - except he actually made his way into the academia, which is nothing short of amazing - in the proud tradition of Joshua Norton, emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico by grace of God.
I see no mention of spherical sheep. Physics,
friction, sheep. It has to contain the phrase:
Assuming spherical sheep...
I, for one, welcome our new homosexual necrophiliac Mallard duck overlords.
Surely, flogging a dead horse falls in the Economics category?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
"Homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species." WhoTF came up with the idea to study this?
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species.
Pfft - too bad I hold the record for first documented case of homosexual necrophilia with the mallard duck species.
COMPUTER SCIENCE (2000 IG) Chris Niswander of Tucson, Arizona, for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard.
http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/
finally!!! we've been trying to find solutions to possible security breach of a heard of cats getting loose in the office.
Having a platonic fondness for ducks, I was intrigued by Dr. Moeliker's report. Reading the paper left me pondering the nature of a universe in which:
Perhaps Dr. Moeliker's work stands as a monument to the curiosity of the human mind, and the need to laugh even as we ponder insane questions. At least he didn't duck the issues...
All about me
homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available...
I got spam with that same line in the header yesterday.
...and no, the links didn't work.
This is only a test Sig. If this were a real Sig, it would be witty, pithy, or rude, just like all the other Sigs.
Could the small and narrow mind also be applied to your inability accept the other side as having a valid and reasonable position? Their stance is based on a religious teaching that has been around a lot longer than you that calls for believers to make a concientious decision on what is right and what is wrong. Being belligerent and attacking Christianity in support of your humanistic philosophy only undermines your position.
During the awards ceremony they had a dead duck and a man walked out onto the stage with an aminal cage that may or may not have contained a duck. The "V chip" lawyer nixed the demo with his whistle.
Philip Zimbardo made an earlier contribution to ignoble research with his notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. From the page: "Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress." Harrowing reading.
The peace prize should have gone to Bush!
"If anything can go wrong, it will"..
It doesn't go anymore wrong than dying from crashing into a glass facade, then having your still-warm body raped by a homosexual necrophilian duck, some human watching the scene earns a price as a result of your misery, and to top it all of, someone post pictures of the whole scene on the internet.. Not exactly the way the duck had wished to go I believe..
on how you define smart. Just memorizing stuff doesn't make you smart, being able to synthesize stuff and use the information that they have memorized does. My computer has gigabytes of stuff memorized - better than a human probably, but it's still not smart.
If a cabbie knows the names and places of every street, but still doesn't know the shortest way through the city during rush hour is he/she still smart? (Of course this may be dependent on their honesty as well. Long taxi rides aren't cheap.)
"It's real and we can touch it, so least we know where we stand." - Jack Burton
So, perhaps the researchers who studied the statues should collaborate with the chicken researchers. Maybe the pigeons were avoiding the statue because it was ugly. I'm sure there's a grant in there somewhere.
"It's real and we can touch it, so least we know where we stand." - Jack Burton
The position of "other side" certainly cannot be characterized as "reasonable," precisely because it is based on religious teaching. When a belief is based on faith, not examination and thought, then it is, by definition, unreasonable.
An opinion can only be characterized as reasonable if its formation required some use of reason, not mere blind faith, and unquestioning acceptance of doctrine.
If one holds the position of religious tradition regarding gays, then one has to accept that ones opinion has been arrived at with no thought on ones own part, but by blind and unquestioning acceptance of the traditional opinion of ones forbearers.
Of course, corpulent humans prefer fried chickens, so it all evens out.
And the fact that black humans prefer fried chickens has been known for years...
> Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species.
"I am not a homosexual necrophiliac!" said Tom in dead earnest.
in large block letters all over the front. Works rather efficiently.
It seems a likely candidate as pre-requisite reading for posting to forums.
Interesting that 90% of the replies to this story are about necrophilic ducks. Says something about the /. population that they find it *htat* interesting.
What I really want to see are the test films from J. Stapp's rocket sled rides.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
The only pictures I see are of a dead duck and one of another duck walking away from the dead duck (I suppose after doing the deed?) So, anyway, not much action in the pictures. Where all the duck-pr0n at?
Meh.
The Ig Nobel Awards were broadcast live, and the archived video can be found here. Real format only, but then, the broadcast was donated by RealNetworks.
Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. While there are those who "blindly" follow a religion, there are those who also use the ol noggin. I have had many deep and challenging dicussions concerning the merits and reasonableness of the various aspects of my religion.
Don't confuse tradition with religion/belief. The New Testament, for example, is full of examples that teach the foolishness of blindly following traditions.
Religion is much, much more than tradition. And it requires thought, reason, and contemplation because if it is to be your religion, at some point you will be asked to defend it.
The article states that the researchers got the informed consent of the men who did the dragging. Nowhere does it mention if the sheep gave their informed consent.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Sure enough, in addition to copper, lead and tin, the statue was found to contain gallium -- not enough gallium to be dangerously toxic, as it turned out, but enough to repel birds. This has led Hirose to work on experiments to develop a metal that will keep birds away from bronze statues for good.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
neurons among the individuals deciding on what projects to award that prize. They were probably jealous when the study got air time on PBS. It also explains why some people are perpetually lost, possibly even some of the awards committee.
I can just imagine the real decision discussion. "They funded that 'who cares' investigation on spatial learning and its effects on neurological development, and they used London cabbies of all things for subjects. But they wouldn't even glance at my proposal to investigate the myriad ways in which post-modern critical theory and hermeneutic approaches have advanced the cause of scientific understanding through demonstrating that the requirement of empirical content in scientific knowledge is simply a delusional structure introduced into the individual's thinking through scholastic indoctrination and ignores neomarxist understanding of the subtextual social determinants that vitiate our ability to understand reality, which renders any hope of empirical content meaningless." "That was cruel. Lets give them the prize."
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I'm too late and no one will see this post, but here's a link to my favorite strange paper: REAL TIME ELEPHANT DETECTION USING INFRASOUND CALLS.
Hey, didn't one of them win the Mastermind TV contest back in the eighties? A Fred something.