“May We Recommend: Continuous Burning of Fake Feces” is a featured revue article in the special Ig Nobel Prizes issue (volume 27, number 6) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Read this article, free, on the web. Then, if research about improbable reality inspires you, subscribe to the magazine, or buy individual back issues.
Category: Ig Nobel
News about the Ig Nobel Prizes — honoring achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.
The Table Salt Bacteriome: Abundant Life in Your Salt Shaker
The team (most of it) that won the 2001 Ig Nobel Prize for Ecology—because they analyzed the bacteria dwelling in discarded wads of chewed chewing gum — has now also analyzed life forms that live in various kinds of table salt. Details are in the study: “Beyond Archaea: The Table Salt Bacteriome,” Leila Satari, Alba […]
Prize-Winning Oil Spill Helps Individual Save Money
ProPublica gives a detailed report about a little-noticed consequence of the oil spill that led to an Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize. The ProPublica report begins: A Massive Oil Spill Helped One Billionaire Avoid Paying Income Tax for 14 Years After the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded in 2010, environmentalists surveying the damage in the […]
Special Ig Nobel Prizes issue of the magazine
The special Ig Nobel issue (volume 27, number 6) of the magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, has flown its way to subscribers. It gives copious details of the 31st First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, and of the winners. This special issue, like many other special issues of the magazine, is also available for purchase. […]
A Gummy Tribute to the 2021 Ig Nobel Ecology Prize Winners
Lavie Tridhar writes, in Nature, a gummy tribute of sorts to the 2021 Ig Nobel Ecology Prize winners, Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela Vidal-Verdú, and Manuel Porcar, who used genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries. Tridhar’s tribute begins: […]
Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony on “Science Friday” on the day after Thanksgiving
Friday, November 26, 2021 is the day for this year’s day-after-Thanksgiving Ig Nobel special on the Science Friday radio program, on public radio stations in the USA. This is the 30th year for the special. (This is the 31st year for the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony itself.) WHAT: This is a specially edited version of […]
“Why do I always spill my coffee?”
Oxford maths PhD student Sophie Abrahams explicates the Ig Nobel Prize-winning research on what happens when one walks backwards while (or whilst) holding a cup of coffee. The 2017 Ig Nobel Prize for fluid dynamics was awarded to Jiwon (Jessie) Han, for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks […]
Upside-down Rhinos, and other Cornellian Ig Nobel Prize winners
Cornellians, the alumni magazine of Cornell University, celebrates some of the alumni who have been awarded Ig Nobel Prizes. The 2021 Ig Nobel Transportation Prize winners are just the latest: “When you see a rhino hanging upside down, it’s a little bit comical,” he admits. “But it makes you wonder, and then you start to […]
The Duck Guy gets yet another honor
A new honor awaits Kees Moeliker, who in 2003 was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for biology, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. Here is the official announcement of the new honor: Kees Moeliker to receive the 54th Laurens Medal The 54th Laurens Medal is being awarded […]
Can You Navigate in a Crowd, While Distracted by Your Mobile Phone?: 2021 Ig Informal Lecture
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. We are releasing these lectures one at a time. The 2021 Ig Nobel for Kinetics was awarded to Hisashi Murakami, […]