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2010 Ig Nobel Winners Announced
Velcroman1 writes "Having trouble breathing? Try riding a roller-coaster. Really. A pair of Dutch researchers who discovered that the symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride are among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel awards, the infamous annual tribute to scientific research that seems wacky — but also has real world applications. FoxNews.com has interviews with several award winners, who are all ecstatic to win, despite the fact that they're all gently being poked fun at."
And finally, a project at the University of Catania in Italy was awarded the management prize for demonstrating mathematically that organizations can improve efficiency by promoting people randomly.
This research deserves a far better prize than the Ig Nobel. Just look at the management in companies! An algorithm far worse than random is being used to select the worst of the worst to run companies.
I believe most institutions run in spite of management.
And don't mod this funny.
Wrong! Only if it has been spun like a roller coaster.
That should cover three minutes twice a year.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
I can't wait to see this added to the Six Flags health plan.
I thought it was lg as in LG nobel Winners Announced Can you tell the difference : lg Ig
does it annoy you so much that nobody actually *is* flaming fox that you have to play with sock puppets...?
My favorite one was the youtube video of the fruit bat giving head... maybe I need to get out more....
C|N>K
"In research that could boost the sales of socks in New England, a study out of the University of Otago in New Zealand found that wearing socks over shoes results in far fewer slips and falls on icy footpaths. It won the physics prize."
This is common knowledge here amongst yachties and other people who walk on green covered slipways (they're not called that for nothing). Put on some rugby socks and you won't fall over. It's counter-intuitive but it works.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Actually yes, pretty much. Using Fox News as a source for a story is like using Encyclopedia Dramatica as a source. It may have amusement value, but as far as finding literal truth you're probably out of luck. Of course, this is also at least partly true of nearly all the mainstream media outlets nowadays, but Fox is by far the worst. It's where people go to have their belief systems affirmed, not where they go for actual news.
Caveat Utilitor
Plainly, women are no longer underrepresented in science and whatnot. Look up the winners' names.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Obama!!! For discovering that chickens do come before the egg..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Since you mention it, they incorrectly state that the economics prize was awarded "for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists." I guess it was a copy and paste error, since that is the same listing they have for the public health award directly above it. If you want to be paranoid (realistic?--I can't even tell anymore) about it, you could say the mistake was made intentionally to avoid publishing how the award poked fun at Wall Street's creative investment schemes.
Don't forget to blame Obama's failings on Bush.
That they let you out.
Surprised and worried.
No brain, no pain.
I'm glad to see the use of slime molds to study transport networks on there.
I honestly thought it was one of the most interesting bits of research I'd seen all year.
Wrong Prize.
DC, too -- being stuck on 395 at rush hour sure makes a slime mold look like a speed demon.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Is Steven Hawkins legally allowed to go into a Utah Cathedral? He has dreams of great asperation.
That's a tautology. All truth is liberal.
Unless free from prejudice and narrow-mindedness, i.e. liberal, it can't progress from an opinion or a belief to the independent verification that truth survives.
Unless free from prejudice and narrow-mindedness, i.e. liberal ...
So you're in effect saying that many progressives are not liberal?
Indeed -- no group has monopoly on narrow-mindedness; there is just a higher proportion of liberals among progressives than many other groups, but each individual progressive can be as close minded and prejudiced as a trailer park reverend.
Unless free from prejudice and narrow-mindedness, i.e. liberal,
Like when conservatives get shouted down whenever they are to speak at college campuses? Like how brown^H^H^H purple shirted SEIU thugs lock out anyone with an opposing view, sometimes using violence? that kind of "free from prejudice and narrow-mindedness"?
Sorry, but liberals are no longer the ones with open minds, willing to listen to all opinions and give them a fair shot and even consider foreign ideas in their own minds. Those true liberals got shouted down and mashed under the thumb of "progressive" liberals long ago. Even other progressives who stray too far from the group think gets silenced.
You should have seen the way Democrats treated each other at the local Democratic caucuses required by Democrats in Texas to elect a candidate. It was held in my local town at City Hall. I was there. It was a sight to see:
Manuella: "Excuse me, every one of you up there is an Obama supporter. Wouldn't it be fair if we had some Clinton supporters up there?'
Person in charge: "Denied"
Manuella: "Well, shouldn't there at least be one Clinton supporter there to oversee everything?"
Person in charge: "Who would you recommend?"
Manuella: "Well, I could do it."
Person in charge: "OK. What's your name? OK, Manuella. Anyone else? John? OK. All in favor of Manuella?"
Group: "Aye"
Person in charge: "OK, all in favor of John?"
Group: "Aye"
Person in charge: "John is the Clinton monitor"
Manuella: "But John has an Obama button on..."
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The thing about that is: Obama has all kinds of problems, is still chipping away at our liberties and rights, and giving it up for corporate interests at the expense of the people, etc. So, on the one hand, I'm not exactly huge fan, even though I believe he was the lesser evil in the last election. Despite all his problems, you have to be an absolute moron not to see that the country is still carrying a ton of baggage from the last administration. It should be obvious to everyone that the affairs of nations have a lot of inertia and their direction cannot be changed with ease. Now, we're a year and eight and a third months into his administration, so we're getting close to the point where it's almost fair to start complaining about his results. Problem is, I've been listening to partisan maniacs like you mock him for his "failings" as president since about a month before he was inaugurated. Since so many of his vocal critics are so obviously insane, it kind of compels you to jump to his defense when they go off, regardless of your own reservations. I guess it's just natural instinct for a geek. When you hear people having a moronic argument with faulty reasoning and a clear absence of facts or any sort of understanding, you just need to correct them and try to teach them how to actually think. When you do it though, your typical partisan maniac will assume that you're allied with their "enemy" and attack them as members or lovers of $other_party.
It's just sad. Democracy in the US (many other places as well) is just sad. The race to the bottom has completed, the judgment is in and a we've all tied for last place. Greed, cynicism and stupidity rule. It's reached the point where it's safe to assume that most people who get into power are corrupt. Note that when I say corrupt, I don't specifically mean that they all take bribes in exchange for their votes, though clearly many do. Many people don't think that they're corrupt if they're not doing things for their own benefit, but merely doing a friend a favor. All they have to do to be corrupt is to ignore the vows and oaths they've taken to uphold the spirit of the laws that govern them (in the US, that principally means the constitution) and to cease to act in the public interest. They're also too lazy or incompetent to do their jobs. They don't read or write the legislation, they just introduce what lobbyists hand them without reading it, relying instead on simplistic summations and analogies given to them by staffers or lobbyists (because, to paraphrase the late Senator Ted Stevens, who will probably live on in the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere for decades, even if he was an enemy of our kind, politics it's, it's not a big dumptruck, it's a series of tubes...). They don't fix what's broken, they just introduce reams of new laws to pile on top of all the old bad ones leaving a dangerous, stupid, disorganized minefield in which even the greatest experts in the land can no longer actually be sure in many cases what the law actually is for many situations.
Party politics are a major part of this. Nothing but insidious tentacles of compromise, ultimately leaching any virtue out of any effort. I remember seeing a photo in a time magazine article on teaching democracy in the classroom from a decade or more ago. It was apparently meant to be endearing. It was a photo of a ballot box the kids had made and decorated with american flag colors. It had two slots on it on the left and right. One was decorated with an elephant, the other with a donkey. It wasn't endearing, it was heartbreaking. That's what they were teaching these kids what democracy is: a choice between one of two scheming, backstabbing, entrenched, supposedly diametrically opposite, but actually depressingly similar parties. The kids from that classroom are all voting age now. Some of them will have voted in the last election. Possibly the one before it as well as I don't quite remember how old they were or how old the article was.
The two-party system stinks. For one thing, most big compan
That's a tautology. All truth is liberal.
To the contrary, by your definition of "liberal", no truth is liberal.
For instance, "1x1=1" is pretty narrow-minded. In fact, for most people who support that statement, it's not even up to debate. Liberal implies that everything is subjective, hence the "open-mindedness". Truth, by it's very nature must be objective. Therefore, while any statement may be accepted by a liberal thinker, to hold it as truth is to betray liberality.
Open-mindedness is great for creating art and brainstorming. However, narrow-mindedness is required to form rational thought. A closed mind, on the other hand, only repeats what it has learned.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
What? Sex works too?
That's quite an impressive straw man you've built there. And I'm in awe of the ferocity you display in tearing it down. You must be very proud of yourself.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Don't ignore that "or for a portion thereof." at the end. They certainly did manage to maximize gain and minimize financial risk for certain members of the economy. It's actually a simple equation. The way it works is, you take money from someone who trusts you to invest it and make a return for them, then you use various kinds of complex accounting tricks to give that money to yourself. Voila, financial gain for you at no risk, because you gave all the risk to some sucker. True genius.
"So, the mechanics of US Democracy are fundamentally broken, and there are tons of ways to make it better. The most simple way, although it would have paradoxes of its own, just not as bad, would be to let people cast their one vote either for or against one candidate. That way, the Democrats and Republicans could mutually annihilate one another and then everyone else could get on with some real voting. Still a bit too blind though. Another way is to have everyone rank all the candidates in order of preference, or possibly just the ones they actually care about or at least know about. Once again, that should probably include a want and a do not want pile (that should help stop parties with small but rabid followings but that most of the population despises from getting a chance to win. ie, the nazi party candidate gets negative 60 million votes). There are a lot of systems that have been worked out, many with very few paradoxes (I'm not sure, but I think it may have actually been proven that you can't have a single pass system without paradoxes), that are better than the one the US uses. Partly that's because they've been worked out by very clever people who know what they're doing and how to mathematically vet the system, and partly because _ALL_ other systems of vote-taking are superior to the US system when it comes to accurately measuring the will of the populace."
I agree but the UK system is not much better. And when it comes to voting systems there are many and they all have flaws. Try getting a computer to agree with its self! then wade through the various modes and discover the problems every one has.
matfud
Not all of them. It's not unheard of, or even uncommon for winners to be self-nominated. I remember back in 1996 when the award in Public Health went to a pair of doctors who'd nominated themselves for a paper they'd published about a case of VD he'd treated for a Norwegian ship captain. He won because it turned out that said captain had caught the disease at sea from an inflatable partner.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
You're funny.
I hope you were trying to be.
I note that TFA summary lacks a link to the ig Nobels own site..
So here it is although via Corel Cache since the site appears to be taking quite a heavy hit.
I think I'm probably the first to try via corel cache so its still loading for me, but I hope giving this link will improve that...
Yes, there is an error in the Fox News article. Here is a quote from the official site instead:
ECONOMICS PRIZE: The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money -- ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.
http://improbable.com/ig/winners/
Prosp long and liver.
I was there, and as we left the place there were people handing out small packages of red Swedish fish. So the mystery is solved(?)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
No, I'm serious. And don' call me Shirley!
Free Martian Whores!
By stating that '"1x1=1"' is 'true' you're interpreting the meanings of the symbols '"', 'x', '=,' and '1' in a very conservative manner.
ENGINEERING PRIZE: for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.
MEDICINE PRIZE: for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride.
TRANSPORTATION PLANNING PRIZE: for using slime mold to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks.
PHYSICS PRIZE: for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
PEACE PRIZE: for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists.
ECONOMICS PRIZE: for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: for disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix.
MANAGEMENT PRIZE: for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.
BIOLOGY PRIZE: for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats.
Once we get FDA Approval for the use of roller coasters to treat asthma, I will look forward to forcing my insurance company to build one for me in my back yard. YAY!
More flags, more tidal volume!
52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
And it can't be coincidence that the lead author of the paper on microbes and bearded scientists has the surname Barbeiro. Looks like he tried to avoid the obvious profession by going into microbiology but fate proved too strong.
"Students drink more during the weekends".
Being able to sleep in more often, I don't have to overcaffeinate myself, and I'm not riding my bicycle out to campus, so less sipping form an oversized water bottle...oh, you meant alcohol? Don't drink more of that either. 0 = 0. [still 21. :(]
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.