Improbable Research

There are many ways to deliver criticism effectively, but emitting a loud startling noise at a person who is in the middle of a life-threatening procedure is not one of them.

So writes Miss Conduct about a predicament faced recently by 2007 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize co-winner Dan Meyer.

NOTE: Dan Meyer is coming to participate—to take a bow, and perhaps then some—at the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, which happens tomorrow night: October 2, 2008.

On his way to the Ig Nobel prize ceremony, 2003 biology prize winner Kees Moeliker will stop over in New York for a public talk in the Museum of Sex. Tuesday, September 30th at 1 and 4 pm, he will take part in a gallery chat in the exhibition ‘The Sex Lives of Animals‘. MoS curator Sarah Jacobs (see photo) will introduce the philosophy of the exhibit and Kees Moeliker will elaborate on homosexual necrophilia, in the mallard duck and other animals.

The tale of the duck that won Moeliker his Ig Nobel prize in 2003 is part of the exhibition now featuring in the Museum of Sex. The duck has his own little wall: the wall of the mallard.

The Museum of Sex is at 233 Fifth Avenue, New York. With a ticket to the museum (18+ only) the gallery chat is free of charge.

Journalist David Brooks writes:

Boy, how the time flies. The 2008 Ig Nobel prizes are just 2 weeks away! Here’s the Web site - get your tickets while they’re hot. As always, it will be in Harvard’s ridiculously elegant Sanders Theater, which makes the goofiness all the more delightful.

I’ve attended the last 15 of them (I missed the first few) and they’re always a blast. Heck, last year I even bought my own tickets instead of sponging off the press pass, so I could bring my wife and friends - and you can’t get much more of a recommendation than that. If you’ve never seen it, you should.

Lloyds TSB, namesake of LLoyd’s of London, which won the 1992 Ig Nobel Economics Prize, has just rescued one of Britain’s biggest—and shakiest—financial institutions. As reported in the September 18, 2008 Times:

Lloyds TSB confirms £12.2bn rescue deal for HBOS

Lloyds TSB today unveiled the terms of its agreed £12.2 billion rescue of HBOS as it moved to stabilise the financial markets and help bail out Britain’s banking system….

Lloyds TSB and Lloyds of London have no direct connection with each other (we apologize for confusing them in an earlier version of this post—thanks to Nico Chart for alerting us to our error).

Lloyds of London, meanwhile, soldiers on in the War of the Names.

The 1992 Ig Nobel Economics Prize was awarded to “The investors of Lloyds of London, heirs to 300 years of dull prudent management, for their bold attempt to insure disaster by refusing to pay for their company’s losses.” Lloyds recently (September 10, 2008) announced the reassuring news that:

Lloyd’s wins extended civil restraint orders against former Names

The civil restraint orders granted yesterday by the High Court are another significant step towards ending the long running saga of Names’ litigation against Lloyd’s and make it extremely difficult for Names to issue fresh claims against us.

Scientists have uncovered evidence for an inbuilt “sat-nav” system in the brains of London taxi drivers.

So writes the BBC in a recent report about the research of Hugo Spiers from University College London, who presented his results at this week’s BA Science Festival. Earlier studies had shown that taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus - a region of the brain that plays an important role in navigation. Dr Spiers was keen to go beyond brain structure ” …and see what activity is going on inside the brains of taxi drivers while they are doing their job,”

The BBC did not mention that this earlier study (by Eleanor Maguire, David Gadian, Ingrid Johnsrude, Catriona Good, John Ashburner, Richard Frackowiak, and Christopher Frith, also of University College London) won the 2003 Ig Nobel medicine prize ‘for presenting evidence that the brains of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.’

Hugo Spiers and Eleanor Maguire apparently collaborate on this subject.