Sometimes the Ig Nobel Prizes can bring clarity to puzzling events in the news. Consider the recent, sudden destruction of the city of New Orleans from some unexpected effects of Hurricane Katrina, and consider these two Ig Nobel Prizes from years past:
CAN/SHOULD ONE ANTICIPATE DISASTER?
The 2003 Ig Nobel Engineering Prize was awarded to the late John Paul Stapp, the late Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols, for jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy’s Law, the basic engineering principle that "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it" (or, in other words: "If anything can go wrong, it will").
UNSKILLED AND UNAWARE OF IT
The 2000 Ig Nobel Psychology Prize was awarded to David Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kreuger of the University of Illinois, for their modest report, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments."
[ADDENDUM, September 28, 2005: subsequent news reports, in today’s Washington Post and elsewhere, elaborate on this.]