The Ig Nobel Prizes

by Abrahams, Marc

• ISBN13: 9780452285736
• ISBN10: 0452285739
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-08-31
• Publisher: Plume

Summary

The Nobel Prize recognizes the world’s most talented and innovative minds. Unfortunately, not all of the hopeful thinkers and academics around the globe can become Nobel laureates, but some are lucky enough to win the Ig Nobel Prize instead.Drawn from the world’s wackiest actual research, The Ig Nobel Prizesdemonstrates the extreme measures that people will take in the quest for knowledge, and pays tribute to those individuals whose achievements cannot—or should not—be reproduced. Recent Ig Nobel honorees include: • The professor who proved that toast falls buttered side down more often than not • The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama which devised a formula to determine how many Alabamans will go to hell • The founder of the amusement park known as Stalin World” Featuring these endeavors and many more, The Ig Nobel Prizesis an entertaining exhibition of brains and determination.

Author Biography

Marc Abrahams is the editor and cofounder of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), its online counterpart, www.improbable.com, and the monthly e-newsletter mini-AIR. The founding father and master of ceremonies of the annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard University, Abrahams has a degree in applied mathematics from Harvard. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
What's an Ig?	p. 2
How It Began, Briefly	p. 3
How the Winners Are Chosen	p. 4
The Ceremony	p. 5
Controversy	p. 9
How to Read This Book	p. 12
Medical Breakthroughs	p. 15
Failure of Electric Shock Treatment for Rattlesnake Envenomation	p. 16
Nose Picking in Adolescents	p. 19
Elevator Music Prevents the Common Cold	p. 23
Psychology and Intelligence	p. 27
A Forbidding Experiment: Spitting, Chewing Gum, and Pigeons	p. 28
Ignorance Is Bliss	p. 31
Economics	p. 35
Squeezing Orange County/Bringing Down Barings	p. 36
The Good Lloyd's Shepherds Insure Disaster	p. 40
Dying to Save Taxes	p. 43
Enron--and Then Some (and Then None)	p. 46
Peace--Diplomacy and Persuasion	p. 51
The Levitating Crime Fighters	p. 52
Daryl Gates, the Gandhi of Los Angeles	p. 55
Stalin World	p. 59
Peaceful Ejaculations and Explosions	p. 63
Booming Voices of Britain	p. 64
Father of the Bomb	p. 67
Pacific Kaboom	p. 70
Love and/or Reproduction	p. 73
The Compulsive Biochemistry of Love	p. 74
High-Velocity Birth	p. 78
Taking Fatherhood in Hand	p. 82
Insert Here	p. 86
Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size	p. 90
Discoveries--Basic Science	p. 93
The Happiness of Clams	p. 94
Cold Fusion in Chickens	p. 97
Mini-Dinosaurs, Mini-Princesses	p. 101
The Remembrance of Water Passed	p. 106
Discoveries--Things That Rise or Fall	p. 111
Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts	p. 112
The Fall of Buttered Toast	p. 116
The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow	p. 120
Levitating Frogs	p. 124
Troy and the Grizzly Bear	p. 127
Troy and the Grizzly Bear	p. 128
Inventions	p. 133
The Most Inventive Salesman	p. 134
The Kitty and the Keyboard	p. 138
Patenting the Wheel	p. 141
Hellish Technicalities	p. 145
Who Is Going to Hell	p. 146
Mikhail Gorbachev Is the Antichrist	p. 149
Scents and Sensibility	p. 155
The Self-Perfuming Business Suit	p. 156
Filter-Equipped Underwear	p. 159
Food for Thought	p. 163
Extremely Instant Barbecue	p. 164
Sogginess at Breakfast	p. 167
The Effects of Ale, Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches	p. 170
No Need for Food	p. 174
How to Make a Cup of Tea, Officially	p. 178
The Sociology of Canadian Donut Shops	p. 183
The Optimal Way to Dunk a Biscuit	p. 186
Education	p. 191
Banning the Beaker	p. 192
Deepak Chopra	p. 195
Dan Quayle	p. 199
Literature	p. 201
976 Coauthors in Search of a Title	p. 202
The Father of Junk E-mail	p. 204
Appendices	p. 209
Year-by-Year List of Winners	p. 210
How to Nominate Someone	p. 229
The Web Site	p. 231
About the Annals of Improbable Research	p. 232
Acknowledgments	p. 234
Index	p. 237
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