Tickets for the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony go on sale today — July 31, 2009 — at noon (Boston time) from the Harvard Box Office. They are available online and at the Box Office in Holyoke Center in Harvard Square. The ceremony will happen on Thursday night, October 1, at Sanders Theatre, honoring ten […]
Month: July 2009
Noses split by swords, and so on
During the Fechtschulen, the public displays of skill where members of the local fighting guilds vied for prize money and “Kräntzlein“, injuries like noses split by swords, teeth knocked out by hits into the mouth, eyes gouged out by staff thrusts, even deaths were not uncommon… and how couldn’t they, considering the “scoring” mechanism was […]
Hair length in Florida theme parks
Clarence Robbins [see photo at right] and Marjorie Gene Robbins visited theme parks hoping to find a good, representative mix of hairy-headed strangers. They then wrote a study called Hair Length in Florida Theme Parks: An Approximation of Hair Length in the United States of America. It tells how Robbins and Robbins gathered data, combed […]
July mini-AIR
The July issue of mini-AIR just went out. Topics include: Murphy’s Lawn; Murphy’s Bloat; Murphy’s Incompleteness Theorem; Ambiguous Educational Opportunity; Spent Mushroom Compost Odorous Component Poet; Goose Down Train Track; Melted Cheese, Erotic Vomiting; etc. Mel [pictured here] says, “It’s swell.” (mini-AIR is the simplest way to keep informed about Improbable and Ig Nobel news […]