Ig Nobel Prizes, Friday fun link

October 3, 2008

The staid and oh-so-proper BBC has a nice wrap-up of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony that was conducted at Harvard. My favorite was the research that shows that expensive placebos are more effective than cheap ones. I wish we could say the same about bail-outs.

Posted by Paul Rako on October 3, 2008 | Comments (1)

October 5, 2008

In response to: Ig Nobel Prizes, Friday fun link
Darren Holdstock, UK commented:

Respected institutions both, and the Ig Nobel awards are often presented by real Nobel Prize winners, who pay their own travel costs for the honour of being there. My all-time favourite is the 1999 Literature winner, British Standard BS 6008, on how to make a cup of tea: [//sub.spc.org/san/docs/BS6008.pdf]. The list of past winners is at: [//improbable.com/ig-nobel-prizes-2/tickets/], from which some personal favourites are: ----- The Levitating Dutch Frog (Physics, 2000) [www.hfml.ru.nl/froglev.html] ----- Why shower curtains stick to the bather (Physics, 2001) [www.fluent.com/about/news/newsletters/01v10i2/a8.htm] ---- The link between incompetence, inflated self-ego and poor sense of humour (Psychology, 2000) [www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf]. I've genuinely found some of this science useful, though I do feel BS 6008 will stew the tea at the prescribed infusion time of 6 minutes; 4 would be nicer.

About EDN | Site Map | Contact Us | Subscription | RSS

POST A COMMENT
Display Name

Before submitting this form, please type the characters displayed above. Note the letters are case sensitive: