Cubed Wombat Poop, Why Your Left Scrotum Runs Hot, Among Ig Nobel Winners
martyb writes:
Cubed Wombat Poop, why Your Left Scrotum Runs Hot, Among Ig Nobel Winners:
Prizes honor "achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think."
Over the years, curious intrepid scientists have gleaned insight into why the wombat's poo is cube-shaped, explored the magnetic properties of living and dead cockroaches, and determined that a man's left testicle really does run hotter than the right. These and other unusual research topics were honored tonight in a ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theater to announce the 2019 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes.
Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes and honor "achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The unapologetically campy award ceremony features mini-operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures, whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds, and the second in just seven words. Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn't mean it is devoid of scientific merit.
The winners receive eternal Ig Nobel fame and a ten-trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe. It's a long-running Ig Nobel gag. Zimbabwe stopped using its native currency in 2009 because of skyrocketing inflation and hyperinflation; at its nadir, the 100-trillion dollar bill was roughly the equivalent of 40 cents US. (Earlier this year the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced the "zollar" as a potential replacement.) The 2009 Ig Nobel Prize for Mathematics was awarded to the then-head of the RBZ, Gideon Gono, "for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers - from very small to very big - by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000)."
[...] If you happen to be in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, area on Saturday afternoon, September 14, most of the new winners will give free public talks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The lectures will also be webcast.
My personal favorite, in a just-how-do-you-stop-the-squirming kind of way was the Engineering Citation awarded to Iman Farahbakhsh "for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants."
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