News about the Ig Nobel Prizes — honoring achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.
Robert Kunzman‘s earnest TEDX talk “Putting Failure In Its Place” does not fail to emphasize the success of the study “Talent vs. Luck: The Role of Randomness in Success and Failure,” which won the the 2022 Ig Nobel Economics Prize for its authors, Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda. Here’s video of Kunzman’s […]
Indian filmmaker Satish Kaushik, who in 2003 helped Lal Bihari, founder of the Association of Dead People, accept the Ig Nobel Peace Prize — and who years later produced a feature film about the life and death and life of Lal Bihari — has himself died. This report in Business Standard brings the sad news: […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: A sticky fix — News headlines tell a gripping, simple tale: “Royal Navy probe after claims £88m Trident submarine nuclear reactor fault was fixed with super glue” (Wales Online). “Furious Navy chiefs order investigation after ‘workers on […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Cannabis for construction workers — A Nigerian study from 2015 hints at a cannabis boost to efficiency. Manasseh Iroegbu at the University of Uyo, Nigeria, is lead author of “Exploring the performance of mason workers in the […]
Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong were awarded the 1999 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower. (Patent WO/1999/032331, “A Security System for a Vehicle“) Now, in 2023, The South African news organization takes a look back at one of South Africa’s most spectacular but least financially rewarding inventions. […]
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Peter de Smet and Nicholas Hellmuth, […]
Just stumbled across a big box of press clippings from the 90s. Here’s Bill Lipscomb with the plaster cast of his left foot on display. This article in the Harvard Gazette on October 2, 1997, says: IG NOBEL FEET: William N. Lipscomb, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1976, holds his foot up against a display […]
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and […]
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, […]
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, […]