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2006 Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Oct 05, 2006 11:58 PM
from the best-of-the-worst dept.
from the best-of-the-worst dept.
davidwr writes "The Ig-Nobel Peace Prize went to Howard Stapleton for his groundbreaking research in teenager-repellent technology. D. Lynn Halpern won an award for research into why fingernails on a chalkboard are almost as annoying as teenagers. Ivan Schwab garnered his award for research into avian headacheology. Two french researchers cooked up a medal for spaghetti research. Read more about these and other prizes here and at the Improbable Research official web site. To those Slashdotters who were expecting an award, better luck next year."
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Aww... (Score:5, Funny)
bird eyes? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://circletimessquare.com/)
shouldn't that be Ornithology?
Re:bird eyes? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.foodry.com/)
Re:bird eyes? (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday September 04 2006, @10:07PM)
time to use my mod points! (Score:3, Funny)
(http://arungoodboy.wordpress.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 18, @06:41AM)
work on the mystery of why fingernails being dragged down a blackboard produces an excruciating sound: -1, Stupid
how woodpeckers avoid headaches: +1, Interesting
why dry spaghetti breaks into more than one piece when it is bent: -1, Lame
Re:time to use my mod points! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://clintonhawk.net/)
Unfair mod. Should be +5 fucking brilliant.
Now, if we can just herf all those thumpmobiles
Re:time to use my mod points! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://mr-writing-person.blogspot.com/)
Give it five years, and you'll be wondering how you can possibly get along without one.
Re:time to use my mod points! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently someone doesn't know how interesting this problem is. Feynman spent a lot of time on it. It's much, much harder than, say, showing that a tall, skinny brick structure will break 1/3 of the way up from the ground if it's slowly tipped to one side (or if a demolition charge makes it crumble). Though that research certainly isn't Nobel-winning stuff, it's a remarkably difficult problem with a lot of applications (including, methinks, applications to space-station engineering and probably nanostructures).
Re:time to use my mod points! (Score:4, Informative)
(http://arungoodboy.wordpress.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 18, @06:41AM)
Re:time to use my mod points! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Monday September 12 2005, @08:15AM)
Re:time to use my mod points! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.gjrcomputing.com/)
No, it really works! I've seen no electronic teenagers round here...
Sorry.
Re:time to use my mod points! (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 14 2002, @12:33PM)
You seem to miss the significance of that research. Note that the article mentioned the physics Nobel price for big bang research. This spaghetti research is of course very related to the question of how the universe was created. After all, we know it was created by the FSM, and surely bending and breaking spaghetti was an integral part of the act of creation.
No mention for Digital Rectal Massage? (Score:5, Funny)
He also suggests that sex is the most potent cure for hiccups, but that won't really affect anyone on slashdot.
Re:No mention for Digital Rectal Massage? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No mention for Digital Rectal Massage? (Score:5, Funny)
They always said the anal (Score:4, Funny)
(http://cult.freehosting.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 26 2004, @02:22PM)
Another teenager repellant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another teenager repellant (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.freecharity.org.uk/)
The answer: ageism (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr Stapleton deserves the Ig Nobel.
Re:The answer: ageism (Score:4, Interesting)
I first experienced it more than 40 years ago; so I'm not sure why it's news now. Drove me fucking nuts. Store that used it is now bankrupt and a parking lot.
KFG
Peace Prize? (Score:2)
(http://68.48.55.94:27015/)
Re:Peace Prize? (Score:5, Interesting)
There was this guy named Bertrand Russell.
At the end of World War 2 when the 'allies' had the nuke and the Soviets didn't, he advocated a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.
As soon as the Soviets developed their own nukes, he became an anti-nuclear peace activist.
For him, it was all down to game theory.
So yeah in a sense nukes may brought peace -- if the Soviets hadn't developed them, Eastern Europe and Russia would quite possibly have been nuked into submission. I think that would have been less 'peaceful' than the cold war.
Don't miss the past winners. (Score:3, Interesting)
PC? (Score:4, Funny)
Is this a politicly correct blackboard or something?
Limburg Cheese experiment (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.asopos.nl/)
They are one of the leading institutes in mosquito research in the world.
Great.. (Score:2, Informative)
(Last Journal: Sunday September 19 2004, @10:03PM)
Either way bad invention and even worse for awarding him a prize for it. People are still people and when we start making weapons to use on 1 subgroup it's only a step away from becoming a welcome against all.
Dealing with the mosquito... (Score:2, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday June 11 2004, @11:15AM)
So how do we solve it? Nobody is going to listen to a bunch of kids. Could simply disable it. Nobody would know. Any other ways to deal with it?
Links to stories botched and slashdotted (Score:3, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/~davidwr/journal/ | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @09:19PM)
The Improbable Results site I linked is very slow due to media attention. I'm sure Slashdot didn't help
Here's a Coral Cache version of the Improbable Results [nyud.net] website and the list of present and past winners [nyud.net].
If Coral doesn't work, here's a MirrorDot [mirrordot.org] version of the Improbable Results main page.
That's some peace (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the kind of peace we're talking.
The Quickest Way to Clear Out the Mall: (Score:4, Funny)
Send in a pair of Army recruiters.
Works like a champ.
Cancer (Score:1)
(http://www.0x41.com/)
Try this at home! (Score:1)
http://list.dysphagia.com/dysphagia/2002-January/
Odeh M; Bassan H; Oliven A . Termination of
intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage.J
Intern Med, 227(2):145-6 1990
A 60-year-old man with acute pancreatitis developed
persistent hiccups after insertion of a nasogastric
tube. Removal of the latter did not terminate the
hiccups which had also been treated with different
drugs, and several manoeuvres were attempted, but with
no success. Digital rectal massage was then performed
resulting in abrupt cessation of the hiccups.
Recurrence of the hiccups occurred several hours
later, and again, they were terminated immediately
with digital rectal massage. No other recurrences were
observed. This is the second reported case associating
cessation of intractable hiccups with digital rectal
massage. We suggest that this manoeuvre should be
considered in cases of intractable hiccups before
proceeding with pharmacological agents.
That finger thing... (Score:2)
RE: Ignobel (Score:1)
Re:wow, that was lame. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Boo! (Score:2)
Guess again. I'm not even from their country, so I really don't care about their politics. You are the first person I've ever heard describe that particular tabloid rag as "high-brow."
Then again, most of my exposure to them has been via their technology section. Perhaps other parts of the paper are better-written. This particular article certainly does not support that theory, though.