Ten new Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded tonight at the 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The winners, and a description of their work, are listed on the list of all Ig Nobel Prize winners (1991-2022). Each winner has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. The faces you see in the image […]
A research study about lights, food, a rotating chair, and earmuffs is featured the “May We Recommend” column in the special Rotation and Spinning issue (volume 28, number 5) of the magazine. You can read that article free online. Better still, buy a copy of the issue (it’s in PDF form). Or better better still, subscribe […]
This teaser is about one minute long. The ceremony webcast begins at 6 pm (U.S. eastern time), on Thursday, September 15, 2002, and will be a little longer than that. Details — and the webcast itself — will be on the ceremony web page.
A new mini-opera called “The Know-It-All Club” will premiere as part of the 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on Thursday, September 15, 2022. The theme of the 2022 ceremony, evinced in the opera and other bits, is: Knowledge. The ceremony will be webcast. You can watch it here at http://www.improbable.com The opera plot: Every […]
“Rotation of Whirling Dervishes” is a review column about some of the scientific research that focuses on whirling dervishes. Specifically: (1) Physics of the Skirts of Whirling Dervishes, and (2) Whirling Dervish in an MRI Tube. The column appears in the special Rotation and Spinning issue (volume 28, number 5) of the magazine. You can […]
The 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen entirely online (again, as in 2020 and 2021, in deference to the lurking ambitions of Covid-19), on Thursday, September 15, 2022. The webcast begins at 6 pm (U.S. eastern time). Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners will be introduced. Each has done something that makes people […]
Amidst the vastness of a study on old French pig postcards, there is an image from a once-famous, now-somewhat-neglected way to teach drawing. The pig postcard study is: “Visions of Pork Production, Past and Future, on French Belle Époque Pig Postcards,” Michael D. Garval, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring 2015. The drawing […]
The 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony happened on Thursday, September 15, 2022.
A new, stimulating study of cats is aimed at assisting human women. The study is: “Vaginal Lubrication and Pressure Increase Induced by Pudendal Nerve Stimulation in Cats,” Jialiang Chen, Yihua Zhong, Jicheng Wang, Bing Shen, Zhijun Shen, Jonathan Beckel, William de Groat, Christopher Chermansky, Changfeng Tai, Journal of Sexual Medicine, epub 2022. The authors, at […]
Paul Bosland, founder of the Chile Pepper Institute, is profiled in the Washington Post, as a central part of the article “Sorry, Scoville. Peppers deserve better than an archaic heat scale,” written by Tamar Haspel: When Old El Paso wanted jalapeño’s flavor, but not its capsaicin, to blend into its products, Bosland was able to […]