2004 Ig Nobel Prizes Announced

ancice writes "The 2004 Ig Nobel prizes are out. Article by New Scientist. An 'invisible gorilla has scooped the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize for Psychology'. And 'dropped food is safe to eat if it has spent no more than five seconds on the floor' - Public Health. Finally, there's proof for the 5 second rule! And for Engineering, 'Patenting of the combover'. Official page with ceremony and lectures."

Comments

Proper definition/clarification of 5-second rule

[stecoop]

The 5-second rule - if food product should land on the ground and if the dog doesn't eat said food product in 5 seconds than you can have it.

In conjunction with:
Read your town charter, boy. `If food stuffs should touch the ground, said food stuffs shall be turned over to the village idiot.' Since I don't see him around, start shoveling! - Homer.

5 seconds on the floor?

[MrRTFM]

What if it lands in dogshit?

Is there a formula to work out the exact 'safe time' based on what food lands on when it falls?

Re:5 seconds on the floor?

[savagedome]

What if it lands in dogshit?

There might be some common sense involved in that decision.

Re:5 seconds on the floor?

[canoe_head]

There might be some common sense involved in that decision. True, however we are talking about someone who has dog shit on his floor.

Re:5 seconds on the floor?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

What if it lands in dogshit?

Why, pray tell, are you eating near dogshit?

What? Nothing for Diebold?

[Pig Hogger]

For endeavouring to manufacture a machine implementing a method of establishing a tally of votes for public-office candidate without the usage of a paper-trail???

Prior art on combover?

[FerretFrottage]

Didn't they find cave drawings of cavemen that used combovers? The difference being that the combover covered most of their entire bodies.

Two things:

[ImaLamer]

Obligatory Simpsons Quote:

"mmmm floor pie" - Homer Simpson

and the worst comb-over I've ever seen:

My Congressmen

Like in video games...

[suso]

...if you see a piece of food lying on the ground, pick it up.

Re:Like in video games...

[Lars T.]

If the food starts to blink, the 5 seconds are almost over.

The Effect of Country Music on Suicide

[Nos.]

I'm sure Country Music has increased the rate of suicide, while thrash metal and rap have increased the number of homicides.... I know I want to kill the little punks who drive around with this crap blasting out of their car at all hours of the night!

Steve Chabot

[ImaLamer]

I know it's bad form to reply to your own comment, but there was a race between my current congressmen a few years back and we approached his opponent at Oktoberfest. Someone I know give him this tidbit:

Friend: Why don't you ask Chabot in the next debate why he is trying to mislead the people of the first district on a daily basis?

Candidate: What do you mean? (Excited)

Friend: Well, he's been trying to convince us that he has a full head of hair. I've seen that combover, it's not fooling anyone.

Re:Country music suicide enhancer?

[REBloomfield]

screw you hippy! :)

But 80's rock is feel good music. It makes you want to live life, not end it.

Re:Country music suicide enhancer?

[Destoo]

Nah. It's not the music. It's the hormones.

Meh. Depressing teenagers is like shooting fish in a barrel
--Bart Simpson in the Smashing Pumpkins/Cypress Hill episode

Re:No, the 5-second rule hasn't been proven.

[Destoo]

"The next step was sterilizing the tiles and inoculating them with E. coli, then placing 25 grams of cookies or gummies on the tiles for 5 seconds. In all cases, E. coli was transferred from the tile to the food"

There you go.
It should be LESS THAN 5 seconds.
4.99 seconds would have been good.

5 was just too much.

Re:Text in case of Slashdotting..

[Mxyzptlk]

PSYCHOLOGY
Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a man in a gorilla suit.
REFERENCE: "Gorillas in Our Midst," Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris, vol. 28, Perception, 1999, pages 1059-74.
DEMO:
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris

Yeah yeah, but if you closely observed who attended, you could see that it was not Simons and Chabris. In fact, it was Sigourney Weaver, who thought the award was for "Gorillas in the mist"!

Re:Winner

[Ford Prefect]

I didn't see the bee at all, until it was played back. The bee was on the screen for a full 20 seconds in total.

Reminds me of something from a certain radio series I listened to last night..

The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else's Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.

So, presumably to avoid detection, terrorists and other ne'r-do-wells should wear gorilla suits - invisibility is just too much effort. :-)

Country music and suicide rates

[scotay]

A disturbing study showing that the suicide rates for whites in US metropolitan areas is higher in cities where more country music is played on the radio earned the Ig Nobel prize in Medicine for Steven Stack of Wayne State in Detroit and James Gundlach of Auburn University in Alabama.

I think some further study is needed here. My theory is that country music is not actually the culprit, but Southern Baptists are. Country music is more likely to be played in areas infested with Southern Baptists and other fundamentalist Christians. These groups are able to place stricter social controls on anything fun and are constantly harping on homosexuals and on anyone that might be having a good time and not constantly worried about damnation. This denial of the reality of free American lives eventually leads to higher suicide rates. I think we would need to start playing country music in more liberalized areas and see if that might increase the rates of buzzkill before we can blame country music exclusively.

Re:Country music and suicide rates

[maxpublic]

I'd like to counter-point: I think it is totally acceptable to blame country music exclusively.

In that case rap and other forms of kiddie 'music' are certainly responsible for a higher homocide rates. Particularly when some little prick is blasting the ultra-mega-supercool speakers he just bought (either for his house or his car) and refuses to recognize the fact that his neighbors really don't want to listen to his noise collection along with him. And when you ask him - politely - to turn the noise down, he barely touches the volume knob and somehow thinks that's good enough to comply with your request. And whines like the little loser he is when you return to repeat the request.

Wash, rinse, repeat. Eventually go mad and blow the little bastard's brains out. Neighbors applaud wildly, law enforcement officials aren't so approving. Hey, you'd rather have gone for castration to prevent the little shit foisting his substandard progeny off on some witless girl, but the young'ns are just too bloody hard to catch and hold down....

Max

Re:Text in case of Slashdotting..

[Ford Prefect]

Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of Fisheries, for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.

Please, not 'farting' - I believe the correct term is 'fast, repetitive ticks' (or, um, 'FRTs').

i knew i wasn't crazy.....

[to_kallon]

Oddly a large fraction had not noticed a woman in a gorilla suit walk through the scene
for years i've been seeing this big rabbit, and everyone thought i was nuts. but who's laughing now......?

Re:Country music suicide enhancer?

[tomhudson]

A disturbing study showing that the suicide rates for whites in US metropolitan areas is higher in cities where more country music is played on the radio

Now why am I not surprised?

Hey, billy-bob, I dare you to put your shotgun barrel in your mouth.
Shut up, Cleatus!
Double-dare yah!
Yeah? Well I triple-dare you-all back!
Okay.
Bet you a buck your wad of chaw's gone blocked the darn barrel.
(mumbled around barrel) Aint.
Is to!
(mumbled around barrel) Aint!
Is to!
(mumbled around barrel) Aint! I'll proove it to ya! * Bang! *
(shakes head in surprise) Sumbitch, he was right.

The 5 second rule

[iso]

I have been told since I was a kid that this is the three second rule! I can't believe for all these years I've been throwing out two seconds worth of perfectly good food!

Gorilla Gender Bias?

[milo_Gwalthny]

I wonder if they ran this experiment by gender. When I'm watching the guys on TV throw the ball between themselves and at the hoop I never seem to notice my wife walking into the room and talking at me.

She, OTOH, notices everything. And remembers.

To foil the buttered toast rule...

[TFGeditor]

...simply butter the toast on the wrong side.

Re:There are 2 types of country

[NonSequor]

You can summarize the first type of country as "God bless America and my family" and the second type of country as "Let's get drunk and have unprotected sex in a barn."

Since the combover is patented...

[petepac]

...does Donnald Trump own them a licensing fee for using it while on TV?

Re:Text in case of Slashdotting..

[Anonymous Coward]

Many water from the river thames drinkable while no means impossible would demand some plaudits.

WHAT???

Have you been drinking River Thames water again?

Dogs rights

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time dog owner I know that any food that touches the floor is the legal property of the dog.

Re:Proper definition/clarification of 5-second rul

[Like2Byte]

Yeah, right!

Here's a scenario for you stecoop. You're standing in the crowded men's room - late into the evening - at your favorite local bar knowing these people can't pee straight sober much less drunk. You brought your beer with you; because, God forbid, someone steal your drink.

As you're waiting in line to pee, some drunk opens the door into you causing you to spill your drink.

Here's your question: Which puddle do you lick up? You have four seconds to decide.

Re:Proper definition/clarification of 5-second rul

[stecoop]

Hmm, that would fall under Section 1 paragraph II - heading A - The Village Idiot.

The owner would be the village idiot for these reasons:
1) You're standing in front of the door
2) You brought your beer to the bathroom
3) You didn't finish your drink *before* going to the bathroom
4) You are walking in pee
5) You're in crowded men's room

Possible Remedies
1) Pee in your beer bottle to rectify anyone from stealing your beer in the future
2) Finish drink before going to bathroom
3) Plan on going to the bathroom before ordering drink
4) Don't walk in Pee
5) Don't take drink to bathroom.
6) Don't stand in front of a bathroom door
7) Let the dog have it - or you're the village idiot.

Somebody Elses Problem (SEP) field

[Punchinello]

The gorilla experiment proves that the SEP Field in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy actually works!!

Once again, science fiction becomes science fact.

Re:No, the 5-second rule hasn't been proven.

[gphinch]

Well, yes in a university lab where they have janitorial services daily I'm sure the floors are clean. I haven't mopped my floors at home in months. Go bachelorhood!