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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."
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!
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.
From the site: "The winners have all done things that first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK."
So it's not a bunch of nerds dissing other nerds, it's a bunch of nerds bringing the attention of the general populace to funny-but-clever things other nerds have done.
So your research winnig an Ig-Nobel doesn't mean it it useless, neccessarily. Just that it is funny.
Jag pratar lite svenska.
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.
AIR devoted a significant chunk of an issue to Trinkaus a while ago, and as I started the article, I sniggered. After a page or so, I was tittering with him, not at him. By the end, I was awestruck This guy is great. He's spent years doing exactly what the rest of us do, only he's been counting and writing at the same time. The guy is a true scientist, and one that's shown us that yes, the world is indeed slowly but surely going to hell in a handbasket. Most people say 'people used to stop at those stop signs'; he proves it.
So he doesn't work in a supercollider. BFD. Very few people do. He's a gentleman scientist, who over the years has amassed a huge body of research that, while most of the world will find trivial, may one day prove useful to someone. Which is what science is all about.