About a week before the Swedish Academy announces the Nobel Prizes, the editors of the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) announce what they call the Ig Nobel Prizes. Their first catch phrase for the prizes was a little cruel: Awards given to research that either can not, or should not, be reproduced. Since then, they've softened their stance: Awards given to research that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.
The awards have been presented since 1991, and the awards ceremony is a splendid event in which each awardee is challenged to describe his or her research in less than two minutes; the ceremony always features a brief opera that incorporates some aspect of science, usually a recent discovery of some sort. Usually, by the end of the ceremony, the stage is littered by paper airplanes that the audience have fashioned from their programs. A video of this year's ceremony, which took place on September 29, can be seen here.
Having performed a perfunctory search of dkos on the topic of this year's Ig Nobels, I only found references to two of the awards (here and here), so I'm devoting tonight's TC diary to a complete overview. Follow me over the fold...
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The actual number and categories of Ig Nobel Prizes varies from year to year, presumably depending on what the organizers find buried in scientific literature. Except for two early awards, all of the prizes have been for work published somewhere, usually in a refereed journal. So, here are the citations! (For more details, consult the website.)
Physiology
Anna Wilkinson (of the UK), Natalie Sebanz (of THE NETHERLANDS, HUNGARY, and AUSTRIA), Isabella Mandl (of AUSTRIA) and Ludwig Huber (of AUSTRIA) for their study "No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise."
Chemistry
Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami of JAPAN, for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.
Medicine
Mirjam Tuk (of THE NETHERLANDS and the UK), Debra Trampe (of THE NETHERLANDS) and Luk Warlop (of BELGIUM). and jointly to Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman (of the USA), Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, and Paul Maruff (of AUSTRALIA) for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.
Psychology
Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, NORWAY, for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.
Literature
John Perry of Stanford University, USA, for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important.
Biology
Darryl Gwynne (of CANADA and AUSTRALIA and the UK and the USA) and David Rentz (of AUSTRALIA and the USA) for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle
Physics
Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne and Bruno Ragaru (of FRANCE), and Herman Kingma (of THE NETHERLANDS), for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don't.
Mathematics
Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.
Peace
Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, LITHUANIA, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.
Public Safety
John Senders of the University of Toronto, CANADA, for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.
Enough of this frivolity. On to the comments!
From maybeeso in michigan:
This comment by banjolele explains a lot about the tea party and a lot of right wingers. From SwedishJewfish's recommended post *UPDATED* Breitbart and Right Wing blogosphere SMEAR injured vet Scott Olsen.
From Dragon5616:
kamarvt explains how the right wing turns water into wine in kat68's diary post about George Will and Mittens. (Oh, and I discovered that "amygdala" is a portion of the brain concerned with emotional learning.)
From ozsea1:
This comment by tiggers thotful spot on the dilemma of the Democratic voter in these awful times. From SmileySam's rescued post Medi-Cal Cuts Waiver Granted
From bronte17:
A simple message to remember from radical simplicity:
Our rights can't disappear or be taken away.
Our rights are inalienable which means they are part of us and cannot be separated from us. Some may try to punish us for insisting on using our rights, but our rights remain with us as long as we are alive.
From Enough is Enough by MinistryOfTruth.
Meteor Blades makes an important point on production and control of those means in the diary Jeffrey Sachs Lets the Cat Out of the Bag by Deena Stryker.
cotterperson is takin' names and makin' notes while noise of rain provides some delightful snark (laugh 'til you cry) in the wonderful "nails it" diary OccupyBoston: the Privatizing of Public Space by UnaSpenser.
From your humble diarist, er, poster:
thenekkidtruth makes an interesting observation about tea partiers and the conscious evolution some of them are undergoing, in Mark Sumner's front page post Dear tea party, we are not your enemy.
I like the Abbie Hoffman quote provided by CherryTheTart in commonmass's post Some Thoughts on #OWS and Police Brutality.
The Geogre offers a step-by-step plan of action to initiate the prosecution of those who destroyed voter registration forms submitted by Democrats in frustrated1's recommended post "We threw away the ones marked Democratic"
Top Mojo excluding tip jars and first comments (thanks to mik)
1) HEre's my very first suggestion by SJerseyIndy — 167
2) Add-on: by SJerseyIndy — 124
3) What pisses me off is the concurrent myopia by agnostic — 118
4) Sums it up by BOHICA — 112
5) this excellent write up needs to be copied by SeaTurtle — 107
6) this is effin brilliant! by SeaTurtle — 103
7) I'm a Realtor. by Rick Aucoin — 97
8) Cops with assault rifles? WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!! by Port City Moon — 87
9) Cops tell the SOS, the media repeats the lies by FishOutofWater — 83
10) Tipped and Recc'd by Ky DEM — 82
11) Wow! Occupy Coupeville starts tomorrow by Lefty Coaster — 82
12) George Will is easily the most overrated mind by illinifan17 — 81
13) Happy digging! by joanneleon — 80
14) I Gave Up On Facebook When I Posted by webranding — 80
15) Well We All Know Where It's Ended Up in the by Gooserock — 80
16) yep. by SingerInTheChoir — 80
17) Most on Facebook aren't there... by dov12348 — 73
18) Great Diary! You have been there and I for one by nancat357 — 71
19) There are numerous hospitalization reports by mahakali overdrive — 71
20) When he wants to pick one person's by SJerseyIndy — 68
21) Bonus pic by BOHICA — 67
22) The West steps of the Capitol have traditionally by drnononono — 66
23) Disgusting. Damn the banks. Literally. by BeeDeeS — 65
24) Isolation, atomization and fear by ActivistGuy — 62
25) And you could see this immediately. by SJerseyIndy — 62
26) I Go Into Facebook Like Once A Week by webranding — 61
27) General Strike by jpmassar — 60
28) What a story by ask — 60
29) Let's give banks the Shingles. NT by catilinus — 59
30) If Your Friends On FB Are Conservatives..... by snapples — 57
31) An outstanding public spanking of Mayor Quan! by Wendys Wink — 57
32) Worst case scenario by Clarknt67 — 57