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ECONOMICS PRIZE — The Bangkok Metropolitan Police for offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes.More of that sort of thing at the link.
REFERENCE: Numerous news reports....
BIOLOGY PRIZE — Bruno Grossi, Omar Larach, Mauricio Canals, Rodrigo A. Vásquez, José Iriarte-Díaz, for observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked.
REFERENCE: “Walking Like Dinosaurs: Chickens with Artificial Tails Provide Clues about Non-Avian Theropod Locomotion,” Bruno Grossi, José Iriarte-Díaz, Omar Larach, Mauricio Canals, Rodrigo A. Vásquez, PLoS ONE, 2014.
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I thought the urination one was interesting--if true. I don't know how it's useful, but it pleases me to know it.
His work was "Duration of Urination Does Not Change With Body Size."
Well it certainly changes with age. At least for male humans.
This is only because small mammals do not live to be 72 years old. Nor do they drink beer at football games.
Then why does it take a woman 15 minutes to clear the powder room?
"Then why does it take a woman 15 minutes to clear the powder room?"
Maybe you can win an Ig Nobel Prize next year with your fascinating study: "What Are They Doing In There? Duration of Female Time Spent In Restroom Unrelated to Duration of Urination."
The Amazon widget in the sidebar is showing a bunch of toilet seats.
The best: "...mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children."
There must be a great backstory here, "Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty" who had 888 children? And was mathematics really needed to determine HOW this happened? I'm pretty sure sure we can all picture the how. Maybe mathematics are needed to compute the annual statistics, or nightly frequency. Or something.
What a man.
What gets me is how do all the mammals know how long to pee? It's not like they wear wrist watches.
JCC said...
The best: "...mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children."
There must be a great backstory here, "Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty" who had 888 children? And was mathematics really needed to determine HOW this happened? I'm pretty sure sure we can all picture the how. Maybe mathematics are needed to compute the annual statistics, or nightly frequency. Or something.
888 children over 30 years comes to just under 30 per year, or about 2.5 per month. Given sufficient mating partners and opportunities, that seems completely possible. Perhaps in his younger years, he had a higher monthly average and slowed with age. Even then, it isn't hard to see how such a rate is possible.
Considering his nickname, 888 children are entirely possible when the only non life threatening answer is "Of course it's yours!"
It all sounds a lot better than climate science.
It's curiosity-driven. Climate science is not.
Not every batter hits a home run but a lot of people enjoy putting other people down.
Ig Noble Physics Prize is only memorable because the Ig Noble Peace Prize is more common.
Over the years my visits to the head have been an opportunity to reflect, to wander over landscape of thoughts unrelated to the task at hand, or in hand more precisely... In the immortal words of Jacques Clouseau, "Not anymore." From now on I'll be counting the seconds, perhaps I'll hang a stopwatch on that silly little rattan shelf above the tank, together with a clipboard on which to record and graph my data.
Already I'm doubting Dr. Hu's hypothesis. Equines are very rapid pissers. I've never timed one at work, but mare, gelding, or horse, they all produce copious volumes, and they dump it in a high pressure stream worthy of a decent fire hose. They have a habit of waiting to be lead into a freshly mucked and bedded stall to let loose, even if they've been turned out all day while you've slaved over the housekeeping. Just plain cussedness I suppose, or maybe it's their way of making it smell homey.
Walking Like Dinosaurs, unusually for a scientific paper the whole publication is readable online instead of just the abstract. It's well worth a look. There's even a short video on youtube, though I don't see much of a difference.
The Ig Nobel Prizess and the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are two high points of my year, and often are more worthy of acclaim than some of the Nobel Prizes and the Pulitzers.
Carry on, and submit anything really, really interesting to the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
The IgNobel committee knows piss-poor work when they see it.
Don't remember what animal it was at the San Diego Zoo, but it had a very solid stream and I started my watch timer. When it finished, I turned to my wife and said, "65 seconds." Another woman standing near us turned to her and said "Your husband timed it too? Men..."
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