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."

Comments

Summary forgot the best part!

[SamP2]

The Gay Bomb which induces enemies to engage in homosexual behavior.

I wonder how long before it becomes a political weapon of mass discreditation?

Re:Summary forgot the best part!

[retro128]

I'm not sure if it's possible to get our government to screw each other and the public more than they are already.

Re:Summary forgot the best part!

[Dragonslicer]

Then again, I seem to recall reading a study where it was found that monkeys who engage in sex often are less aggressive than those who don't. So maybe it should be mandated that politicians get laid at least thrice per week (once per day if they have nukes) ? I guess that does explain quite a bit about Bill Clinton...

just subtract the expenses from revenue

[User 956]

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.

Re:just subtract the expenses from revenue

[clarkkent09]

Yes, and the guy extracted vanilla flavor from cow dung because he was interested in gross profit

The indexing thing

[Daimanta]

an Australian woman who documented the indexing problems caused by the word "the" Is it just me, or is that pretty handy to know. Words like "the" and "of" pretty much clutter non-smart registers.

Re:The indexing thing

[ribuck]

Heh, it's actually my sister who won this Ig Nobel prize for doing research on how to index "The". The premier geek in the family, and she doesn't even try to be one!

As she points out in her research, how are you ever going to look up the band "The The" unless the word "the" is indexed. And if you index it sometimes, shouldn't you index it always?

Soup Bowl experiment may help dieting

[Russell Coker]

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.

Re:Gay bomb - who tested this?

[WilliamSChips]

And more importantly, when will this show up on Torchwood?

Re:Viagra and jet lag

[ArAgost]

It is quite amusing if you think that what is now considered the main effect of Viagra was considered a side effect during the initial tests :)