The Ig Nobel Prizes 2: An All-New Collection of the World's Unlikeliest Research

Self-importance isn't the worst of crimes, but it can be annoying. This is the perfect cure for that ailment. It's an annual celebration of weird and wonderful in science, medicine, economics, literature, and whatever else appeals to the editors of the Annals of Improbable Research. [dis]Honorees of the annual Ig Nobel awards include: -- the inventor of karaoke (a Peace prize), -- the developers of anti-flatulent Beano, -- the teenage researcher who brought the full force of microbiology and electron microscopy to bear on the Five Second Rule of dropped food, and -- the doctors who developed a protocol for dislodging sensitive manly tissues caught in zippers. But, if there's goofing to be done in science, it will be done seriously. The annual award ceremony is hosted by Harvard University, and is always attended by actual Nobel winners. Ig Nobel winners vary in their response to the award, but most seem willing to see the light side of, for example, a medical study of foot odor. Or "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and Ancient Sculpture." //wiredweird

The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded annually to scholars in extremely diverse and unusual fields. This book is a compendium of some of the best examples of extreme scholarship that you are likely to ever encounter. In this book you will find out how to rent the entire country of Liechtenstein, you will be totally unsurprised that politicians are extremely simple humans, and you will learn the cause and effect relationship of country music on suicide. Many even stranger pieces of research are likewise discussed from a discussion of poultry aerodynamics in "Chicken Plucking and Tornado Wind Speed," to brain efficiency manipulation in "The Intelligence of Single-Nostril Breathing." Without doubt, though, my absolutely favorite piece of scholarship begins on page 212, and is a piece originally published as "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," which originally appeared in "Social Text" (Spring/Summer 1996.) The author, Professor Alan Sokol, believes that academics use enormously complex language to describe the simplest of things, and as such decided to write a paper that was completely and utterly incoherent, that meant nothing, but that was cloaked in obscure jargon. Of course, the editors of "Social Text" didn't know this and found it brilliant and insightful. The joke was on them and they ran it and became the academic laughingstocks they so richly deserved to be. The book excerpts the article, which I have read in full elsewhere. (I highly recommend that you do the same.) Readers of bigheaded nonsense will adore this work, a random excerpt of which follows: "Lacan's 'topologie du sujet' has been applied fruitfully to cinema criticism and to the psychoanalysis of AIDS. In mathematical terms, Lacan is here pointing out that the first homology group of the sphere is trivial, while those of the other surfaces are profound...." Utterly brilliant, and highly recommended.

While the criteria for receiving an Ig Nobel prize: *) An achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced. *) An achievement must first make you laugh and then make you think. seems to render them fodder for the silly bin, there is a very serious side. Many of the major scientific achievements down through history could have been considered candidates for an Ig Nobel prize. Examples include: *) The claim that stones fell from the sky, which was ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson. *) The claim that the Earth revolved around the sun which was considered an unarguable fact for centuries. *) The weighing of the air still considered a joke by many. Most of the research described in this book is clearly absurd and will always remain that way. However, there are a few of the Ig Nobel prizes that may be the first step towards significant results. My favorite is the conclusion reached by Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan Business School and Wojiech Kopczuk of the University of British Columbia. It is summed up in the simple statement: There is abundant evidence that some people will themselves to survive in order to live through a momentous event. Evidence from estate tax returns suggests that some people will themselves to survive a bit longer if it will enrich their heirs." The idea that you can will yourself to live longer is certainly significant in the study of life prolongation techniques. I am in complete agreement with the awarding of the prizes, I found the research leading to the awards amusing. However, after I thought about it a bit, it was clear that it was not so easy to dismiss some of it as good for nothing more than a laugh.

Virtually all of the topics treated are a hoot to read, though this sometimes owes more to the comedic skill of the writers than the to the nature of each subject itself. Case in point: Because of the tall coconut tree in our backyard in Kahuku, Hawaii, the first topic I read was the study of the physics of falling coconuts, finding it humorously presented while still of serious importance. Most people, not living near coconut trees, and even some natives in the tropics, seem not to take falling coconuts seriously, but one fell from our tree, rolled down one of the long leaves, carrying it far enough from the tree to leave an 8" diameter hole in the roof of a sturdy gazebo, which could just as easily have been our neighbor's shed (or head). To me, one of the more interesting accounts was of Dr. Cecil Jacobsen, a noted fertility researcher with whom I attended church for years in northern Virginia, who had decided to use his own sperm to impregnate many dozens of women, while telling them the semen was from other anonymous donors. The IgNobel Prize given to Dr. Jacobsen may not have seemed humorous to Cecil or his unwitting sperm recipients. You'll find a treasure trove of wacky and fascinating matters wittily presented in this collection, and you'll probably find yourself reading it aloud to your friends and watching them crack up (or maybe just watching their jaws drop). Some of the material is appropriate for all ages. (My 10-year-old grandson loved the study of Nosepicking Among Adolescents.)

This book brings together two areas of human endeavor that don't normally go together: science and humor. The Ig Nobel Awards (actually held every year at Harvard University) honor those achievements which "cannot or should not be reproduced."Did you know that elevator music may help prevent the common cold? Companies like Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, Waste Management and WorldCom shared an award for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world. A man from Lithuania created an amusement park called Stalin World. To save money, the British Royal Navy has barred trainees at its top gunnery school from firing live shells and ordered them to shout "bang." It has been determined that, biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. A college professor from Pennsylvania fed prozac to clams (at the cellular level, clams and humans show remarkable nervous system similarities), resulting in a whole lot of reproducing going on. A man from France is the only winner of two Ig Nobels, for demonstrating that water has a memory, and that the information can be transmitted over the phone and the Internet.Then there are the "classics," like the scientific investigation of why toast often falls on the buttered side; an Australian man who patented the wheel, and the Australian Patent Office who granted it; a man from Arizona who invented software that detcts when a cat is walking across your keyboard; the Southern Baptist Church of Alabama for their county-by-county estimate of how many Alabama citizens will go to hell if they don't repent; the sociology of Canadian donut shops, and the optimal way to dunk a biscuit. Last but not least, a solution has been found to the age-old problem of how to quickly start a barbecue. It can be done in less than four seconds with charcoal - and liquid oxygen.This book is hilarious. It's humor of a slightly more highbrow variety, designed to make people laugh, then think. It's highly recommended for everyone, even those who think that they hate science.