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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."
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.
Precisely, the way that many organizations promote people you wind up with incompetent butt kissers and psychopaths being promoted. Whereas if you promote people at random, you get those individuals roughly proportional to their representation at the bottom. The individuals who can't cut it would then tend to drop out leaving you with better managers.
OTOH that's terribly depressing, if a validation of the general observation about management practices.
1: If you haven't heard about the Ig Nobel prize before now, I wonder where you've been. I'm pretty sure that most slashdotters can list more Ig Nobel winning research than Alfred Nobel winning research. On the geek scale, Ig Nobel ranks up there with Darwin awards, knowing Binky's colour and the 20th decimal of pi.
2: Not everyone uses a font where I and l look similar. In fact, programmers, sysadmins and other computer geeks tend to abhor fonts with ambiguity. If you can't tell an Omelet from an 0rneIet, you need to change your font NOW.