Improbable Research

The organizers of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony solved an ancient problem: How to keep speeches from droning on and on… The solution, called “Miss Sweetie Poo”, is an 8-year-old girl who tells long-winded speakers to “Please stop. I’m bored. Please stop. I’m bored…” Here are Miss Sweetie Poo highlights from several Ig ceremonies.

Behold an all-star team of physicians with planetary family names (thanks to investigator Adrianne Appel for suggesting the idea), announced in the May 2010 issue of mini-AIR:

Joseph Venus, MD, Concord, New Hampshire, USA

P.G. Earth, MD, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Audrey Mars, MD, Flemington, New Jersey

Jesse B. Jupiter, MD, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Selman Uranus, MD, Gratz, Austria

Wilfred B. Neptune, MD [recently deceased], Newton, Massachusetts, USA

Luke A. Pluto, MD [subject to revision of Pluto's status], Clarkston, Washington, USA

NOTES:
1. The team is missing a Dr. Mercury and a Dr. Saturn.2. Dr. Pluto is officially a team member — but the league has placed unstated restrictions on him “pending clarification of his status”.

At the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, Public Health Prize winner Dr. Elena Bodnar demonstrates her invention – a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander. She is assisted by Nobel laureates Wolfgang Ketterle, Orhan Pamuk, and Paul Krugman.

As fans of the Ig Nobel Ceremony, opera, and large-scale economic failure may remember, “The Big Bank Opera” premiered as a featured part of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. A few weeks ago, we posted all four acts to YouTube, each as a separate episode (#124-7) of the Improbable Research TV series.

The libretto of the Opera is also published in the latest issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.

Furthermore, Acts One (“Two Bankers Meet in a Bar…”), Two (“How to Solve The World’s Biggest Problem”), Three (“Big Bank Theory”), and Four (“To Boldly Go”) have now been made available on Vimeo, for redundancy and higher-quality video enjoyment.

The grand finale from Act 4 is embedded after the break.

“The Big Bank Opera” premiered as a featured part of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Here’s the entire mini-opera — Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and Act 4 — each as a separate episode (#124-7) of the Improbable Research TV series. The video displayed below is Act 3, which is called “The Big Bank Theory”:

Details:

William Lipscomb, the 1976 Nobel laureate in chemistry, is a Kentucky colonel. He is famous for wearing string ties. Here he demonstrates how to tie a string tie. We made this video as part of the celebration for Professor Lipscomb’s upcoming 90th birthday.