The Russian network NTV has just made a documentary about the Ig Nobel Prizes. NTV visited and interviewed many people—including Ig Nobel Prize winners whose achievements include (among others) the Nudist Research Library, sword-swallowing, patenting the combover, and using magnets to levitate a frog.
Broadcast is scheduled for Sunday, December 9, 2007, at 21.00 (Moscow time), on the “Glavny geroy” program.
These five photographs (below) are the results from an experiment performed November 26 at Imperial College London. 2006 Ig Nobel Mathematics Prize co-winner Piers Barnes was a featured lecturer at the evening’s special Improbable Research event. Dr. Barnes described his Ig-winning research — the calculation of how many photos one must take of a group of people to (almost) ensure having a photo in which no one blinks.
Immediately after the event, Dr. Barnes (in these photos he is the man with both glasses and dreadlocks) and eleven audience members gathered for a series of five photos. We leave it to you to evaluate these results.
The annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony radio broadcast happens today — Friday, November 23. This is the specially edited version of the ceremony. In most (but not all) places that have an NPR station, it begins at 3 pm eastern time. To check times — or to listen over the web — see the Science Friday web site listing.
NOTE: If you are in Boston — where WBUR does not carry the second hour of Science Friday — we suggest you listen over the net to WOSU-AM in Columbus, Ohio. Click here for their windows stream, and here for their real stream.
NOTE: The Nov. 23 Boston Globe has a report about the post-Ig party for the ceremony participants.
ALSO NOTE: 2007 Ig Nobel Nutrition Prize winner Brian Wansink (he of the bottomless soup bowl) has just been appointed executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
Investigator Bessel Mangols alerts us to what he or she describes as “a wonderfully perplexing news report, with an equally perplexing photo, about the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, I think.” The report is from Interfax, dated October 9, 2007. Here are excerpts:
Orthodox human rights activist: gay-parades should be equated with weapons of mass destruction
Moscow, October 9, Interfax - Roman Silantyev, director the World Russian People’s Council’s human rights center, compared gay-parades to weapons of mass destruction.
This comparison was prompted by the award given recently to the developers of a project for a “gay bomb”, a hormone weapon which turns an enemy’s troops into homosexuals. The authors were awarded the “peace prize” given by the so-called Shnobel Prize for the most dubious scientific achievements.
According to the project authors, special pheromones contained in a “gay bomb” dropped on an enemy’s territory would radically raise soldiers’ sexual attraction to each other…
[Patriarch Alexy] told the agency that all structures concerned “should pay attention to the American know-how and consider ranking gay-parades among weapons of mass destruction with a consequent introduction of moratorium on its proliferation”.
Here’s further news about the so-called “gay bomb,” whose inventors won the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize. A letter from David Hambling in the November 3, 2007 issue of New Scientist says (referring to an earlier item in that magazine’s “Feedback” section):
Feedback asked what happened to the US air force’s Ig Nobel-winning “gay bomb” proposal after it was put forward in 1994 (13 October).
The Pentagon has played down the story ever since New Scientist covered it on 15 January 2005. One spokesman is quoted saying it was “rejected out of hand” and another claimed in 2005 that it was never considered “for further development“.
These claims sit awkwardly with the known facts.
In 2000 - six years after the idea was proposed - the document describing the “gay bomb” was included in a CD-ROM produced by the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, which was distributed to military and government agencies to encourage new projects.
In 2001, the proposal was one of a number which the JNLWD put forward for assessment by a scientific panel at the National Academy of Sciences.
No information has been released suggesting that the proposal was taken any further. However, aphrodisiacs would fall under the US military’s broad new definition of a “calmative agent“, the term it has chosen for “an antipersonnel chemical that leaves the victim awake and mobile but without the will or ability to meet military objectives or carry out criminal activity”.
It seems there is considerable classified research in this area.
2007 Ig Nobel Economics Prize winner Hsieh Kuo-cheng — who was feared to be dead or missing — is alive and well. And apparently, he is pleased at winning an Ig Nobel Prize. A November 5 Taipei Times article reports:
Ig Nobel winner talks inspiration
Imagine this: A robber goes into a bank with a gun and threatens to kill anyone who moves. He tries to flee after grabbing the money. While the robber is scurrying out the door, however, a net drops from the ceiling and the robber is wrapped up like a dumpling.
Similar scenarios have already appeared in comic books and movies, but up until now that is where they have stayed.
But Hsieh Kuo-cheng (謝國楨), who owns a security firm in Taichung, was able to turn this seemingly fantastic idea into reality. He is now known as the inventor of the net-trapping device, also known as (tienlotiwang, 天羅地網) in Chinese, which became a US patented product in 2001.
The device also came to the attention of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine, the organizer of the annual Ig Nobel Prize. The magazine eventually decided to recognize Hsieh as this year’s Ig Nobel Prize winner in economics.
The list of this year’s award winners was released at a ceremony held in Boston last month. Hsieh, however, could not attend the event because the committee was unable to find him in time for the awards.
“Somebody suggested to us the possibility that maybe the poor man was trapped inside his own machine,” magazine editor Marc Abraham said at the ceremony.
The mysterious Hsieh eventually appeared after the story of his Ig Nobel Prize was published in local Chinese-language daily newspapers.
The 56-year-old Hsieh said in an interview with the Taipei Times that the creation was inspired neither by comic books nor novels. As a former commander of an amphibian frogman unit in Kinmen, Hsieh said they used to set up traps similar to the device to capture Chinese spies swimming to the island to engage in espionage work.
Hsieh established a security firm in Taichung after he was discharged. He was the bodyguard of former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) when Hau ran as an independent presidential candidate in 1996.
Eight years ago, Hsieh began to research the possibility of creating an automatic system that would capture robbers and thieves using a big net. Not knowing if it would be feasible, he sought the assistance of scientists in both Taiwan and China and spent more than NT$20 million (US$617,000) on the project.
“The whole world was against it [the project], including my wife,” he said.
“Money was not really an issue to me,” he said. “All I know is that crime rates are rising everywhere, and the device, once created, can be sold around the globe.”
The device was eventually created and has proven to be workable after two years of testing in Shanghai.
Hsieh said that the device will be installed above the entrance to banks.
When a robbery occurs, the bank staff can press a button on a remote control to activate the system. The system will lock onto and trace the robbers, unleashing a net from above when he or she gets close to the entrance.
He said the device is also equipped with a high-speed lifting motor, which will allow a rope to quickly tie up the robber and suspend him above the ground with his body upside down.
Hsieh noted that the device has not been installed anywhere, as it is yet to be mass produced.
Dan Bloom, the Ig Nobel Prize representative in Taiwan, said he thought Hsieh was chosen because his invention was so unfathomable that the committee wanted to know why he was willing to go through the trouble of creating the system.
“The concept [of a net-trapping device] just blew them away,” Bloom said.
Bloom said that organizers will invite Hsieh to Boston next year to be officially recognized.
You can view a video demonstration of the system by going to webcf.info/ and clicking play on the video insert. [Or click on the image to the right here.]
Tonight is Ig Nobel night at the Genoa Science Festival.
The event starts at 9:00 pm. at the Ducal Palace. AIR editor Marc Abrahams will introduce Ig Nobel Prize winners Stefano Ghirlanda, Donatella Marazitti, Ruurd de Jong, and Kees Moeliker, and Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club man of the year (and rock star) Dr. Piero Paravadino.
Dutch Museum Hunts Elusive Crab Lice
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A Dutch museum said Friday it is having trouble getting its hands on a parasite that just about everybody else is anxious to avoid: crabs.
The Rotterdam Natural History Museum has appealed for somebody — anybody — to give it a single crab louse for its collection, amid fears they may be dying out.
The donor’s anonymity, said curator Kees Moeliker, is guaranteed.
“We have over 300,000 species represented in our collection,” he said. “Even though most of them are not on display, that doesn’t mean small, unpopular insects are less important scientifically.”
Moeliker said he began hunting in earnest for the species, also known as “pubic lice,” last year after reading an article published by British doctors in the June issue of the journal of Sexually Transmitted Infections.
The article, titled “Did the Brazilian Kill the Pubic Louse?” found that crabs rates had fallen first in women, and several years later in men in Leeds. The authors hypothesized that the bikini wax known as “The Brazilian” that removes all or most pubic hair, might be to blame.
“When the bamboo forests that the Giant Panda lives in were cut down, the bear became threatened with extinction. Pubic lice can’t live without pubic hair,” Moeliker said….
So says an October 19, 2007 Associated Press report. Kees Moeliker is the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner (for his discovery of homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks), and also now is the Annals of Improbable Research’s European Bureau Chief. Our European Bureau is located in the Rotterdam Natural History Museum.
NOTE: To see an earlier stage of the crab louse project, see the October 2006 issue of Nieuw Rotterdam.
A friend of the Bush family has asked us to state, for the public record, whether the Ig Nobel Board of Governors has any connection with the person or persons who produced this video (click on the image to see the video).
The video has just appeared on Youtube. It is a response to the recent announcement of the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize.
Here is our statement: The Ig Nobel Board of Governors has no connection with whoever produced that video, nor are we in any way responsible for or against the content of their message, or for their peculiar manner of spelling the word “prize.”
UPDATE: Nor are we in any way responsible for or against the content of this gentleman’s video on the same subject.
On October 11, 2007, we received a lengthy email message labeled “(UNCLASSIFIED) Military Applications of Ig Nobel Peace Prize Research.” The author, Dr. David Leffler, urged us to share it with you. Here is an abridged version:
You may recall that in 1994 world-renowned quantum physicist Dr. John Hagelin received the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained Transcendental Meditation (TM) experts caused a significant decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C. His groundbreaking research was later published in Social Indicators Research.
A lot has happened since this time. The advanced TM-Sidhi program is now also known as Invincible Defense Technology in military circles. I am the Executive Director at the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS). We advocate the use of Invincible Defense Technology by the military to prevent terrorism and war. We have an impressive group of military-related experts at CAMS including retired generals and a former military aide to President Ronald W. Reagan and President George H. Bush. Their pictures and bios are available at our website at: http://www.StrongMilitary.org
Please view a MUST SEE online video (1:17:00) by Dr. John Hagelin, who is now the executive director of the International Center for Invincible Defense in New York City. The Harvard trained physicist recently addressed UN ambassadors, government leaders, and the world press to call for establishing in every country a group of experts in “Invincible Defense Technology” (IDT) to render every country impervious to attack…. The video is available at: http://www.invincibledefense.org/videos/2007_04_11_hagelin.html
[Furthermore,] I hope you and your colleagues will carefully read this paper.
Sincerely,
David R. Leffler, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS)
We have just received a letter signed by a Mr. Mark State of Toronto, Canada. It is a copy, Mr. State says, of a letter he sent to the British newspaper The Guardian in response to that newspaper’s October 5 report about the new Ig Nobel Prize winners, most of whom attended the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.
We presume, but do not know for a fact, that this is the same Mark State who in 2006 campaigned, with some success, to be elected mayor of Toronto. Here is the full text of Mr. State’s letter:
Copy of letter to the editor, Guardian. Neither the Guardian nor anyone else looking forward to the awards had any idea of the true nature of the research involved before the ‘recipients’ explained themselves while being humiliated by you and your misdirected humour. It’s a lesson to all of us: don’t publish, or some jerk will make fun of you and your paper.
Re: It’s official: swallowing swords hurts your throat
Sure, spoofing is great fun. But these Spoof awards are going to genuine research. The titles and some of the contents seem silly at first glance, but the general unwashed public only gets that first glance, thanks to the careful way the awards group avoids actual information about the research. Even your reporter has been fooled into thinking that these areas of research are “fluff’. This conclusion is probably erroneous. For example:
· Sheets wrinkle, and laundry chemical manufacturers pay huge money to universities for the –now spoofed- research to find out why, so they can develop anti-wrinkle detergents, for example.
· Who can tell what is important about rats trained to human voice commands not being able to follow them backwards while researchers study their brainwave patterns upon reception of the unfamiliar commands, and how that might lead to –now spoofed- aphasic pattern clarification and educational advances in human beings?
· Any librarian will tell you that cataloguing “the” is a royal pain, and librarians worldwide will welcome a –now spoofed- standard on the subject, as will editors and directory compilers, etc.
· And all the rest. You figure out what might really be going on…or perhaps look it up on the WWW using your favourite browser after you finish your chuckle about some title researchers didn’t think you’d ever know about when they were telling those who were interested what they were doing in the titles of their work.I’m thinking that to make fun of these efforts is to belittle them unfairly. This is hurtful and insulting to the researchers; and might possibly do actual harm by inhibiting future grants. Not funny. Not funny at all. The IG really seems to stand for the IG Norant morons who are “awarding’ these prizes without thinking their consequences through.
I can think of one justified IG-Nobel award, however. The IG Nobel awards group itself would be a fitting recipient for the IG Nobel prize for humanitarianism.Mark State
Toronto Ontario
Canada
PLEASE NOTE: the photo shown here is of the Mark State who campaigned to be mayor of Toronto. We do not know for certain whether he and the Mark State who wrote this letter are the same person.
UPDATE: The Las Vegas Sun, in an editorial on October 12, has a different take on the subject.
Every year, after the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard, and after the Ig Informal Lectures at MIT, comes a relaxed party for the winners and the Ig Nobel organizers. Friendships are forged, ideas are born, good food is enjoyed. At this year’s party, 2007 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize co-winner Dan Meyer (co-author of the medical report “Sword Swallowing and Its Side-Effects“) collaborated with 1976 Nobel Chemistry Prize winner William Lipscomb for a small experiment. David Kessler, stage manager of the Ig ceremony, filmed the moment (click on the image):
(NOTE: To see one of Dan’s earlier collaborations, with a different collaborator, click here.)
Kees Moeliker, 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner, participated in this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. He writes about it in the October 9, 2007 issue of The Guardian. His report (or click here for the version with photos) includes this passage:
We are in the Sanders theatre to meet new and returning winners. The first to show up is Francis Fesmire, of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, who won the 2006 Ig Nobel medicine prize for his novel treatment of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage.
What has happened to him since winning an Ig? “The phone did not stop ringing for months: interviews and talks in all parts of the country,” he says. But, strangely, Dr Fesmire was not asked to treat a poor girl in Florida who had the hiccups for six weeks.
Brian Witcombe, of Gloucester, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, have won the 2007 medicine prize for their penetrating medical report Sword Swallowing and its Side Effects, published last year in the British Medical Journal. Until today, Witcombe, a radiologist, and Meyer, a professional sword-swallower, have never met.
“Almost nothing was published about the medical side of sword swallowing, and Dan Meyer’s database of all members of the Sword Swallowers’ Association International was a true goldmine. We exchanged hundreds of emails,” says Witcombe. Both new winners had heard only vaguely about the Ig awards before Abrahams phoned them. Despite his ignorance, Witcombe says he was “flattered, delighted and amused” and imagines colleagues “may feel a little envy and extra respect”. Meyer says he will never forget the moment that he was notified of his nomination.
In the photo above right: 2006 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize winner Francis Fesmire explains his work to Nobel Laureates Craig Mello (left) William Lipscomb and Dudley Herschbach moments after the 2007 ceremony. In the photo below, 2007 Medicine Prize co-winner Brian Witcombe is partly visible behind and to the left of the red hand. Both photos: David Holzman / Annals of Improbable Research.
The Ig Informal Lectures happen today, beginning at 1:00 pm, at MIT Building 10, Room 250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.
The new Ig Nobel Prize winners will explain, as best they can, why they did what they did. Each talk will be a maximum of five (5) minutes long. The lecturers will be joined by several past Ig winners, in the presence of autodidactic hecklers, and possibly some Mozart-playing accordianists.
Admission is free — but the room is (like many rooms) of limited size, so it’s a good idea to get there early.
UW Fails to Win Ig Nobel Prize
So says an October 4 item on a blog written by a thoughtful person at or near the University of Wisconsin.
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