2007 Ig Nobel Awards Announced
prostoalex writes "The annual Ig Noble awards by Annals of Improbable Research were announced tonight. The winners included the scientists who discovered that impotence drugs help with jet lag recovery, "a Dutch researcher who conducted a census of all the creepy-crawlies that share our beds, Spanish scientists who found that rats sometimes could not distinguish between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch spoken backwards, an Australian woman who documented the indexing problems caused by the word "the", a Japanese researcher who extracted vanilla flavoring from cow dung, and a Taiwanese man who patented a Batman-like device that drops a net over bank robbers," MSNBC says."
The Gay Bomb which induces enemies to engage in homosexual behavior.
I wonder how long before it becomes a political weapon of mass discreditation?
It would actually be great for countries with overpopulation actually.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
At least no animals were harmed during the construction of their site. Or were they? (I prefer the Darwin Awards personally and think those should be televised.) Either way it seems they've got the /. effect going on there as the site isn't reachable any more.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
a Taiwanese man who patented a Batman-like device that drops a net over bank robbers
Yes, well, he only developed it because he was interested in the net profit.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
*BANG*
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
I wish it hadn't... ""Autotrophic Organisms in Mattress Dust in the Netherlands," B. van de Lustgraaf, J.H.H.M." Yay?!? FTW.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
I understand Bush has just announced a "War on Weather".......
rats sometimes could not distinguish between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch spoken backwards
I don't know about rats, but apparently humans cannot distinguish between Japanese spoken backwards and Howard Dean screaming backwards.
Any intelligent indexing already ignores the clutter. This was a completely redundant research.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Photo: House dust mites feed on human skin scales...
Well, that's a Spiderman-like device then, surely?
The research that showed people eating more soup (without feeling more full) if the bowl was filled without them noticing is not interesting on it's own. But if the opposite is true then it may be commercially successful.
What if you had a soup bowl that sucked soup out without the eater noticing, if they felt full after believing that they ate a large bowl of soup then it might make dieting a lot easier!
If the appearance of food size determines how much people eat then maybe different shaped bowls could affect how much people eat. Maybe a bowl that makes a serve of food look big would encourage people to eat less.
See http://etbe.coker.com.au/ for my blog.
I just noticed that the Ig Nobel mantra is "Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK". I wonder whether Professor Frink deliberately echoed that in his little ditty: " Professor Frink, Professor Frink, He'll make you laugh, he'll make you think". After all, Professor Frink certainly deserves a few Ig Nobel Awards...
I wonder who tested the "gay bomb" for the US air force?
Sounds like a good excuse for some guys who were gay already "we're not gay, we're testing some new weapons". If they didn't ban gay men from joining the military this wouldn't be a problem.
Alexander the Great seemed to be successful in his military campaigns with a significant number of homosexuals in his army. Maybe the US military would be more effective if they used the "gay bomb" on their own guys.
See http://etbe.coker.com.au/ for my blog.
I must have missed something.
Medical science is full of instances where a drug designed for one thing turns out to be useful for other things as well. Why, then, is it so amusing to consider if Viagra may have interesting and useful side effects?
a Japanese researcher who extracted vanilla flavoring from cow dung
No matter how you sugarcoat it, that's just a load of bullshit.
...a Japanese researcher who extracted vanilla flavoring from cow dung,...
Ummm,....why would you even try? WTF?
27. The device according to claim 26 wherein said device goes "WHAM", "POW", or "BIFF" when used.
Can you please identify your country, so we can admire its leadership?
Simple. It goes under "The, The."
Somebody set us up the gay bomb!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Did they name the university after a beer brand?
Search engines often exclude words like "to" and "in" also. There have been a couple of times where these were paramount to find a match, but didn't since they were ignored. I wish I could remember the examples because they were frustrating. I tried other angles and eventually found matches through mostly link hopping, not the search engine.
:-)
And no, it wasn't "dick in mouth"
Table-ized A.I.
how about you and I go and do our civic duty ?
probably "dick in a box"
When I was going to college this was the "Journal of Irreproducible Results", a comic relief for such "wound up" scientist and researchers. I remember one issue with the cover page picture of a shark liver cell that happen to look like a shark.