The 2011 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

The Ig® Nobel Prizes

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.

Winners were announced and awarded on Thursday night, September 29. The ceremony was webcast live. For more information, check the ceremony page.

 

PHYSIOLOGY PRIZE: Anna Wilkinson (of the UK), Natalie Sebanz (of NETHERLANDS, HUNGARY, and AUSTRIA), Isabella Mandl (of AUSTRIA) and Ludwig Huber (of AUSTRIA) for their study “No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise.”

REFERENCE: ‘No Evidence Of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise Geochelone carbonaria,” Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl, Ludwig Huber, Current Zoology, vol. 57, no. 4, 2011. pp. 477-84.

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Ludwig Huber 

 

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami of JAPAN, for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.

REFERENCE: US patent application 2010/0308995 A1. Filing date: Feb 5, 2009.

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Makoto Imai, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami 

 

MEDICINE PRIZE: Mirjam Tuk (of THE NETHERLANDS and the UK), Debra Trampe (of THE NETHERLANDS) and Luk Warlop (of BELGIUM). and jointly to Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman (of the USA), Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, and Paul Maruff (of AUSTRALIA) for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.

REFERENCE: “Inhibitory Spillover: Increased Urination Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains,” Mirjam A. Tuk, Debra Trampe and Luk Warlop, Psychological Science, vol. 22, no. 5, May 2011, pp. 627-633.

REFERENCE: “The Effect of Acute Increase in Urge to Void on Cognitive Function in Healthy Adults,” Matthew S. Lewis, Peter J. Snyder, Robert H. Pietrzak, David Darby, Robert A. Feldman, Paul T. Maruff, Neurology and Urodynamics, vol. 30, no. 1, January 2011, pp. 183-7.

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Mirjam Tuk, Luk Warlop, Peter Snyder, Robert Feldman, David Darb
 

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, NORWAY, for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.

REFERENCE: “Is a Sigh ‘Just a Sigh’? Sighs as Emotional Signals and Responses to a Difficult Task,” Karl Halvor Teigen, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, vol. 49, no. 1, 2008, pp. 49–57.

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Karl Halvor Teigen

 

LITERATURE PRIZE: John Perry of Stanford University, USA, for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.

REFERENCE: “How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done,” John Perry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 1996. Later republished elsewhere under the title “Structured Procrastination.”

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Colleague Deborah Wilkes accepted the prize on behalf of Professor Perry.

 

BIOLOGY PRIZE: Darryl Gwynne (of CANADA and AUSTRALIA and the USA) and David Rentz (of AUSTRALIA and the USA) for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle

REFERENCE: “Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females (Coleoptera),” D.T. Gwynne, and D.C.F. Rentz, Journal of the Australian Entomological Society, vol. 22, , no. 1, 1983, pp. 79-80

REFERENCE: “Beetles on the Bottle,” D.T. Gwynne and D.C.F. Rentz, Antenna: Proceedings (A) of the Royal Entomological Society London, vol. 8, no. 3, 1984, pp. 116-7.

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz

 

PHYSICS PRIZE: Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne and Bruno Ragaru (of FRANCE), and Herman Kingma (of THE NETHERLANDS), for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don’t.

REFERENCE: “Dizziness in Discus Throwers is Related to Motion Sickness Generated While Spinning,” Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne, Bruno Ragaru and Herman Kingma, Acta Oto-laryngologica, vol. 120, no. 3, March 2000, pp. 390–5.

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: The winners accepted via recorded video.

 

MATHEMATICS PRIZE: Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.

 

PEACE PRIZE: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, LITHUANIA, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

REFERENCE: OFFICIAL CITY INFO

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Arturas Zuokas

 

PUBLIC SAFETY PRIZE: John Senders of the University of Toronto, CANADA, for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.

REFERENCE: “The Attentional Demand of Automobile Driving,” John W. Senders, et al., Highway Research Record, vol. 195, 1967,

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: John Senders

Source: http://improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html

Say Somenthing Nice

Improv Everywhere constructed a custom wooden lectern with a megaphone holster and an attached sign that read, “Say Something Nice.” The lectern was placed in public spaces around New York and then left alone. We wanted to see what would happen if New Yorkers were given the opportunity to amplify their voices to “say something nice.”

Say Something Nice was produced by Improv Everywhere as part of the Guggenheim Museum exhibition stillspotting nyc. This is our second collaboration in the series, the first being The Mute Button.

Enjoy the video:

Check the whole story: http://improveverywhere.com/2011/08/22/say-something-nice/

Hold Your Horses (new: audio included!)

BBC Learning English is an excellent tool to improve your English skills. 

Transcript

William: Hello and welcome to The English We Speak. My name is William Kremer.

Li: And I’m Li. William, what’s our phrase today?

William: Well, hold on a second Li, let me just play you -

Li: No, come on, tell me now – what phrase are we looking at today?

William: Well, we’ll come onto that in a minute but I’ve got some very special FX for you…

Li: More special FX?! And special music? That’s not what our people want! They want authentic English phrases, and they want them now! So what’s our phrase today?

William: Li, hold your horses!

Li: Eh?

William: Hold your horses. It means: be patient.

Li: Oh… where does this phrase come from, William?

William: Well, apparently it comes from battles in times of war:

FX – Battle re-enactment noise

Man: Hold your horses men!

FX – gunfire, horses whinnying

Li: Wow, Will, your FX this week are really special!

William: Hmmm, I know! In that clip we heard a soldier telling his men to hold their horses before he started firing weapons.

Li: But nowadays, I am guessing, you don’t need to be a soldier to use this phrase, right?

William: Exactly, yes. It means: don’t rush, be patient. Let’s hear a couple of examples:

Man: I’ve just gone online to order us some new computers. What’s our charge code again?

Woman: Ah, well you’re going to have to hold your horses! I haven’t agreed a budget yet with the management team.

Man 2: I’ve just spoken to Mark –

Woman 2: Have you indeed? Well don’t listen to a word that man says! He’s never liked me…

Man 2: Hey, hey hey! Hold your horses. We didn’t discuss you at all, as a matter of fact.

Li: So in that first example, the man couldn’t order his computers yet because the company hadn’t agreed a budget. He had to wait; he had to hold his horses.

William: Hmm. And in the second example it was slightly different. In that clip we heard a woman interrupt the man because she thought she knew what he was going to say.

Li: Ah yes, the man told her to hold her horse and wait for him to finish speaking.

William: Ah, yeah, but Li we never say “Hold your horse” we always say “Hold your horses”.

Li: Oh OK, I’ll bear it in mind. But, er, Will…?

William: Yeah?

Li: Can you hold this for me please?

Horse whinnying

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/

Intelligent Words

Long and exotic words (like defenestration or sesquipedalian) are often more fascinating than useful. By comparison, these words can enrich conversations without sounding ridiculous.

Paradigm

Definition: a theory or a group of ideas about how something should be done, made, or thought about

Words It Might Replace: idea, theory, concept

Example:

“Pessimists are bemoaning the end of U.S. human spaceflight, but optimists see the next few years as a transition to a new paradigm that will energize commercial ventures and get astronauts beyond Earth orbit for the first time since the Nixon administration.” – Alan Boyle, MSNBC.com, July 13, 2011

Paradox

Definition: a statement that seems to be contradictory or opposed to common sense yet is perhaps true

Words It Might Replace: puzzle, surprise

Example:

“Withhold $800 million in military aid, let it go through, or double it – no matter what Washington does it can’t escape the paradox that [Pakistan] is its most important ally in the war on terror.” – Zachary Fillingham, Geopolitical Monitor, July 11, 2011

Nuance

Definition: a very small difference in color, tone, or meaning

Words It Might Replace: aspect, thing, detail

Example:

“…Research shows that our memory is strongest and lasts the longest when our emotions are heightened. This helps explain why we might remember every nuance of our wedding day or our valedictory speech in college.” – Richard Zwolinski, Blogs.PsychCentral.com, July 11, 2011

Dilettante

Definition: a person whose interest in an art or in an area of knowledge is not very deep or serious

Words It Might Replace: dabbler, amateur, hack

Example:

“But compared with Matthew de Abaitua I am a complete dilettante. We camp perhaps once a year, and only in summer, and only in good weather (we cancel if it’s wet).” – Tom Fort, Telegraph.co.uk, June 28, 2011

Serendipity

Definition: luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for

Words It Might Replace: luck; chance; good fortune

Example:

“If there is one thing social networks and living in public have facilitated, it’s serendipity. Serendipity is a good thing. It’s been well documented that people who talk to strangers tend to be luckier, and this also applies to communicating with our existing networks…” – Kaila Colbin, MediaPost.com, July 15, 2011

Euphemism

Definition: a mild or pleasant word or phrase that is used in place of one that is offensive or unpleasant

Words It Might Replace: alternative, “another way of saying”

Example:

“Anyone who’s ever lived in a small apartment building full of quirky (usually a euphemism for ‘extremely irritating’) tenants has probably imagined one of them suddenly found dead or killing somebody else.” – Steve Donoghue, Washington Post, July 8, 2011

Dichotomy

Definition: a division into two mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or things

Words It Might Replace: split, division, contrast

Example:

“But ballet, with its built-in dichotomy of gender roles (women alone rise on point, men alone may do the partnering), has a romantic tension that can seem poignant, even tragic.” – Alastair Macaulay, New York Times, July 4, 2011

Non sequitur

Definition: a statement that doesn’t logically follow from or is not clearly related to anything said before it (literally, ‘it does not follow’ in Latin)

Words It Might Replace: nonsense, stumper, “huh?”

Example:

“‘Russia needs more successful young entrepreneurs, therefore, governors should have more children!’ At first it may seem a non-sequitur. But in Russia the joke is obvious, cutting to the heart of a growing source of discontent among the young: routes to professional success are fewer and fewer, while the offspring of top provincial officials and the like do well.” – Charles Clover, Financial Times.com, July 11, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Epiphany

Definition: a moment in which a person suddenly sees or understands something in a new or very clear way

Words It Might Replace: realization, insight, breakthrough

Example:

“Maybe it’s just my country roots or possibly I’ve failed to recognise the changes happening around me, but this week I had an epiphany. Our nation is changing.” – Editorial, TheCourier.com, July 9, 2011

Conundrum

Definition: a confusing, intricate, or difficult problem

Words It Might Replace: problem; challenge; dilemma

Example:

“I thought you were trying to solve the conundrum of how, in spite of our expensive automatic sprinkling system, we still have brown patches in the yard.” – Joe and Linda Skinner, Grand Junction Free Press, July 8, 2011

dfgdfgdfg…

One of the many products of repeatedly smashing the keys of a computer in boredom/frustration/stupidity. The cyber equivalent of a chipmunk screaming in anger.

 Girl 1: OMG I’m so bored dfgdfgdfgdfgdfgdfg

Girl 2: …Ok..?

Abbreviations: Commercial English

Vocabulary: At the Hotel

At the hotel

The receptionist

Hello, can I help you?

Would you like a room with a bath or a shower?

How long would you like to stay at our hotel?

How would you like to pay?

Your room is on the second floor on the right.

Sorry, we’re fully booked for tonight.

Sorry, we are full up. (AE*)

Is there anything else I can do for you?

The guest

Have you got a single room for tonight?

I’d like to stay in a double room.

Do all the rooms have air-conditioning?

Is breakfast included?

When do you serve breakfast?

Could you give me a call at 7 tomorrow morning, please?

 *AE: American English

Click on picture for large view

Disability vs. Hadicap vs. Impairment

All three terms are pretty much interchangeable in many instances but most of the time each is used in a certain way.

Later vs. Latter

Later is an adverb. It’s used to express time, either in the future or after the time you have mentioned.

For example: “I’ll see you later on Sunday.”

Latter is an adjectiv, which means near or towards the end of something

For example: “The English test had two parts: grammar and listening. I got tired during the latter part .”

!Latter can also be used to describe the second thing of two things mentioned.

For example: Later, at the end of his apprenticeship, he was offered the choice of going to Russia for further experience in the flax trade or of entering a university he decided on the latter course and entered the University of Edinburgh in 1882 to study for the B.Sc. Degree in Physical Science.

New Facebook Changes

Install Fake Profile Page for Parents

There’s the joyful, dejected, angry, conflicted public face you show your friends. Then there’s the benign “no need to ask further questions” face you wish to show your folks. Facebook will make that all the easier by creating a false profile page every time your parents go online to see how you’re doing. Not only will this pseudo-profile page filter out all photos of you drunk, making out or attempting to initiate “Pantsless Thursdays,” but it will also fill your wall with such harmless, enthusiastic updates as “Enjoying a cup of tea” “Kittens make me giggle” and “My job is personally fulfilling and allows me the money to eat healthy on a daily basis.” Then where it would usually say “In a relationship with…” it will simply state “Dating that person you really like and know is just perfect for me!”

Automatically Block Old Photos of Yourself

Thanks to the site’s new face recognition software, Facebook will seek out and remove any childhood photo someone posts of you that was taken at a time you were not in complete charge of your wardrobe choices, mistook the photographer’s call to “Smile” as “Look like you’re about to be hit by a truck,” could not convince your mom she was not a gifted hairstylist or just simply illustrate the temporary ravages of puberty. Then it will replace all such pictures with one you’ve designated as “The Only Official Decent Photo of Me Ever Taken,” even if it means you now appear to have been 6’3” in third grade, sported a beard at your Holy Communion or were never without a glass of wine in kindergarten.

Random Update Generator

Feel like there’s not enough going on in your life to share online but don’t want to go so long without posting an update that people begin to fear you’re dead or have been kidnapped by robots with an ironic hatred of technology? No worries! The Random Update Generator will routinely send out posts about your life that are detailed just enough to sound real but not so specific that friends will wonder when the hell you learned how to parasail motorcycles. Examples include “You know that thing I love to do? Now I’m doing it TWICE a day!” “Hung out with someone so famous that you already know who I’m talking about” and “You won’t believe where I am right now! Can’t say anymore or the orcs will banish me.”

Publicly Label “Frenemies”

Whenever a “friend” uses your update as an excuse to take a cheap shot or insult you in a passive-aggressive manner, Facebook will automatically precede their comment with the following statement in bold red print: “The following snide, undercutting comment is made by an exceedingly jealous, unsatisfied individual who claims to be a friend if only because such access childishly allows them to attack their social betters again and again, not realizing doing so will never fix their own pathetic shambles of a life.” Then it will add an emoticon of a tiny yellow circle shaking its head in utter, utter disgust. 

“Stalking” Relationship Status

If a person continuously checks in on someone they are neither dating nor related to, Facebook will add “Is repeatedly stalking (name)” at the top of that person’s profile page. Then on the stalker’s wall it will list every time he or she has looked at their obsession’s photo albums or read their updates, taking special care to note when such activity has occurred after 2 am. In addition, Facebook will send out “People You May Wish to Avoid” suggestions about the person to the entire community as well as regular post sponsored ads featuring the stalker’s photo and such copy as “Creepy has a new name and it’s Lou Stanton!”

Initiate Self-Destruct Sequence

Sometimes you’ve said too much online. Sometimes you’ve shared too much with a world that was never quite ready to hear about your disturbing political views, abhorrent sexual appetites or outright alarming revenge fantasies against the good people of Walgreens. But soon all that will be no more thanks to Facebook’s upcoming “Self Destruct” button. Rather than simply delete old posts, the button will instead permanently wipe clean the memory of anything you’ve ever written about or provided shocking photographic evidence of online. Then you can calmly rejoin Facebook and communicate with friends without your every update being followed by a comment like “Seriously, Dude. Walgreens is just a pharmacy. Stop talking about training rabid bunnies to go after their employees’ junk.”

Source: http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/articles/facebook-changes-i-wish-they-would-make