Every Ig Nobel Prize ceremony since 1996 has included a new mini-opera, performed by professional opera singers (with Nobel Laureates acting in supporting roles). These mini-operas honor the tradition of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons “What’s Opera, Doc?” and “Rabbit of Seville“—each mini-opera is a pasticcio that marries a brand new story & words to beloved […]
Recent progress in SpongeBob SquarePants® studies
SpongeBob SquarePants first made a public appearance in 1999, but it took quite some time for the emergence of a scholarly work which directly cited the character as a primary focus for study. This one, from 2005, is a likely candidate as the first : ■ A More Porous Postmodernity: Absurdity, Politics, Consumerism and the Cultural […]
Much ado on Mars, maybe
Echoing the cogitation that earned other people the 1996 Ig Nobel Prize for biodiveristy and the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for astronomy, Ohio University Professor Emeritus William Romoser has announced a planetload of his own discoveries. The university celebrated Romoser’s recent findings, in a November 19, 2019 press release that says: Photos show evidence of […]
Crime and Sniffles
Crime may be affected by the sniffling of potential criminals which may be affected by the amounts of pollen in the air, which might explain all sorts of things, suggests this new study: “More sneezing, less crime? Health shocks and the market for offenses,” Aaron Chalfin, Shooshan Danagoulian, and Monica Deza, Journal of Health Economics, […]