Rose Fox - The Art of the Prank

December 4, 2009December 15, 2023

19th 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Video, Part 1 of 4

Submitted by Rose Fox: The 2009 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony took place on Thursday, October 1, at Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. After several exciting false starts, the Annals of Improbable Research present video of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in four parts:

Part 1: Pre-show Risk Cabaret Concert by The Penny-wise Guys, and the very, very beginning of the ceremony.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7911519&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

Part 2: Lots of introductions. Several past winners return. Benoit Mandelbrot’s keynote address.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7911813&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Part 3: Awarding of several prizes. First two acts of the mini-opera. The 24/7 Lectures. Continue reading “19th 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Video, Part 1 of 4”

November 27, 2009December 15, 2023

Ig Nobel Awards 2009

Submitted by Rose Fox: The 2009 Ig Nobel Awards were featured on “Science Friday” on NPR today. You can find the broadcast in this archive. Here also is an archive of past years’ broadcasts.

Ig Nobels Honor Weird Academic Achievements
by Bob Gordon
DigitalJournal.com
November 16, 2009

bra.200 The Ig Nobel prizes – a play on the name of the Nobel prizes awarded every October from Stockholm and Oslo – are given out by the Harvard-based humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

They are co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students and the Harvard Computer Society.

Here’s a brief rundown of this years 10 winners.

Veterinary medicine: Drs Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson say they have shown in their study in Anthrozoos (“A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People and Animals”!!) that by giving a cow a name and treating her as an individual farmers can increase their annual milk yield – by over 60 gallons.

Medicine: Donald Unger for cracking just the knuckles on his left hand for 60 years to see if knuckle cracking contributes to arthritis. He didn’t get arthritis in either hand, leading him to conclude there was “no apparent relationship.”

Public health: Elena Bodnar, Raphael Lee and Sandra Marijan for inventing a brassiere than can be converted into a pair of gas masks. Continue reading “Ig Nobel Awards 2009”

October 3, 2008January 15, 2019

Monty Python Communist Quiz sketch

From Rose Fox:

Live from the Hollywood Bowl: Sketch from Monty Python – A Communist quiz featuring Marx, Lenin, Che, Mao.

Monty Python Communist Quiz sketch

October 2, 2008January 15, 2019

2008 Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded at Harvard University

Breaking news about the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Awards from Rose Fox:

Oct. 2, 2008, Cambridge, MA. The 2008 Ig Nobel Prizes, honoring achievements that first make people LAUGH, and then make them THINK, were awarded at Harvard University’s historic Sanders Theatre tonight before 1200 spectators in a ceremony filled with redundancy, sword-swallowing, opera singers and paper airplanes. Around the world, thousands watched via live webcast. This was the 18th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.

Seven of the ten new winners journeyed to Harvard — at their own expense — to accept their Prizes.

The 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Winners are:

Nutrition Prize
Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.

Peace Prize
The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.

Archaeology Prize
Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de Sà£o Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo. Continue reading “2008 Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded at Harvard University”