Ig® Nobel Prize Winners for 2021
On the night of September 9th this year’s winners of Ig® Nobel Prizes were announced:
BIOLOGY PRIZE [SWEDEN]:
Susanne Schötz for analyzing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other modes of cat–human communication.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Susanne Schötz
ECOLOGY PRIZE [SPAIN. IRAN]:
Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela Vidal-Verdú, and Manuel Porcar, for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela Vidal-Verdú, Manuel Porcar
CHEMISTRY PRIZE [GERMANY, UK, NEW ZEALAND, GREECE, CYPRUS, AUSTRIA]:
Jörg Wicker, Nicolas Krauter, Bettina Derstroff, Christof Stönner, Efstratios Bourtsoukidis, Achim Edtbauer, Jochen Wulf, Thomas Klüpfel, Stefan Kramer, and Jonathan Williams, for chemically analyzing the air inside movie theaters, to test whether the odors produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behavior, drug use, and bad language in the movie the audience is watching.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Jörg Wicker, Nicolas Krauter, Bettina Derstroff, Christof Stönner, Efstratios Bourtsoukidis, Achim Edtbauer, Jochen Wulf, Thomas Klüpfel, Stefan Kramer, Jonathan Williams
ECONOMICS PRIZE [FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, UK]:
Pavlo Blavatskyy, for discovering that the obesity of a country’s politicians may be a good indicator of that country’s corruption.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Pavlo Blavatskyy
MEDICINE PRIZE [GERMANY, TURKEY, UK]:
Olcay Cem Bulut, Dare Oladokun, Burkard Lippert, and Ralph Hohenberger, for demonstrating that sexual orgasms can be as effective as decongestant medicines at improving nasal breathing.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Olcay Cem Bulut, Dare Oladokun, Ralph Hohenberger
PEACE PRIZE [USA]:
Ethan Beseris, Steven Naleway, and David Carrier, for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to the face.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Ethan Beseris, Steven Naleway, David Carrier
PHYSICS PRIZE [THE NETHERLANDS, ITALY, TAIWAN, USA]:
Alessandro Corbetta, Jasper Meeusen, Chung-min Lee, Roberto Benzi, and Federico Toschi, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not constantly collide with other pedestrians.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Alessandro Corbetta, Jasper Meeusen, Chung-min Lee, Roberto Benzi,, Federico Toschi
KINETICS PRIZE [JAPAN, SWITZERLAND, ITALY]:
Hisashi Murakami, Claudio Feliciani, Yuta Nishiyama, and Katsuhiro Nishinari, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Hisashi Murakami, Claudio Feliciani, Yuta Nishiyama, Katsuhiro Nishinari
ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE [USA]:
John Mulrennan, Jr., Roger Grothaus, Charles Hammond, and Jay Lamdin, for their research study “A New Method of Cockroach Control on Submarines”.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: John Mulrennan, Jr.
TRANSPORTATION PRIZE [NAMIBIA, SOUTH AFRICA, TANZANIA, ZIMBABWE, BRAZIL, UK, USA]:
Robin Radcliffe, Mark Jago, Peter Morkel, Estelle Morkel, Pierre du Preez, Piet Beytell, Birgit Kotting, Bakker Manuel, Jan Hendrik du Preez, Michele Miller, Julia Felippe, Stephen Parry, and Robin Gleed, for determining by experiment whether it is safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside-down.
WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Pete Morkel, Mark Jago, Robin Gleed, Robin Radcliffe
22 comments
i would seriously hate to be on a submarine with cockroaches.
A few foggers before you leave port and some roach baits thrown around – no problem
A test… testing, testing!
What do you know! I can finally comment again!
I haven’t been able to comment for some time. I just get “that form is insecure!” messages on Firefox, Vivaldi & other browsers. I suspected it was either win10 or my AV/AM software. But nothing I tried stopped it. I don’t know if you made any changes, but something has changed!
Anyway, I hope you are all well. 😀
It was WordPress. It took me a week and hacking some of the php files as well as the settings to get it behave. I’ve been reading your Twitter feed. I finally signed on as they started to be annoying about outside lurking. I’m Perun @Perun2548 if I uncloak.
I’m doing fine as I avoid people as much as I can so ungovernor DeMentis of the pathetic state of Florida has no opportunity to kill me.
Your federal and state governments are starting to look just as bad as the US with everything except the pandemic. Maybe the Coalition politicians think a good scandal improves their political status.
Welcome back, sorry for the problem.
Wow! Something wasn’t my fault for a change this year! Good to know. 😉
Our Governments are worse now. NSW just got a completely sociopathic RW christian Fundi extremist as Premier. That won’t end well. You know all about Scummo of course.
I have been keeping up on the USA & Florida especially. There are a few people in the Twitter #GeeksResist group in FL. I do feel for all the good sane & decent people there.
No apology needed. I know what a PITA WordPress can be! Glad you got it working again though. You may have missed your calling my good Friend! 😆
I followed you back on T. You can DM me if you just want to chat about anything out of the public system. One of the benefits of T! 😉 😀
I’ve known quite a few good American’s on T, some have followed me. & vice versa, for some years now. All over the USA, gives a good perspective.
I am very glad to hear you are doing well. 😀
Don’t mention Submarines to Aussies right now! A very sore subject! 🙁
I finally got a certificate et al. and shifted to TLS but assumed that WordPress would notice, as it did in most cases, but not in Comments. It’s free, so you have to accept the annoyances. It still beats Blogger which continually screws with the editor.
I was trying to explain to a friend about the u-boot problem. She thought everyone involved was being silly. I can understand why it happened, but the project shouldn’t have been outsourced in the first place, especially with the extreme distances involved. That’s an opinion, but I wasn’t in the Navy so it isn’t overly informed. Maybe not as bad as buying F-35s from the US, but a bad idea made worse by the supply chain problems caused by C-19.
I would think that they would call an election in NSW to replace Gladys and then select a Premier, especially given the reasons for her exit. Being able to call elections whenever is one of the features I appreciate most about parliamentary systems.
The hurricane system has been busy, but mostly harmless except for Ida hitting Louisiana on the anniversary of Katrina. Only one regular name left and two months to go.
I saw that you became my first follower this morning. I’m easing into the system and trying not to be an embarrassment to the cats. Trying not to die in a state lead by a death cult in the time of a pandemic is time consuming. The US has now surpassed the death toll of the 1918 flu epidemic. The Ungovernor Ron DeMentis has killed more Floridians (50K) than his margin of victory in the 2018 election (32K). Given that the majority of the victims were Republican voters, 2022 election is not looking good if he keeps killing his voters.
I need to get to bed as I apartment business in the morning.
No worries Bryan. I hope you had a good sleep. I could use a few. 😉 😀
Remember, I was a consultant on the Collin’s Sub’s. It was a debacle, i said it would be a debacle, and it was a debacle. This is also a debacle. Everything the LNP do IS a debacle. End of story.
I was telling friends in the #GeeksResist group a few Months ago that der Ron would hopefully for FL become a C19 statistic. Lots of agreement.
Take care Bryan, I know you are careful & sane. But too many others aren’t (you know that also of course).
Sleeping is easy when you have showers every night and the thunderstorms happen in the early afternoon. Very strange weather patterns – no tropical storms, but weeks of rain.
The standard is to low bid a government contract and then make your money on the change orders when the government finds out what they ordered won’t do the job they needed. I had to deal with the government as a subcontractor for one of my clients. I had to battle with government to find out exactly what they wanted. I gave to them, they signed and paid the invoice. Then two months later they said that my data output wasn’t compatible with some M$ software. I explained that any competent user of that software would know how to import my data as it was in the common format needed to transfer to the state government as stated in the contract. They wanted me to add the data conversion into my program. I declined as I had other things that needed doing. I then called my client and told them I wasn’t available for any government contracts.
Governments keep laying off/making redundant the experts they need to write good requests for bids that will result in getting what is needed. Those experts are then scooped up by government contractors.
Ron doesn’t wear masks, but, like most Rethuglicans, his vaccines are up to date. It’s like Faux News – they tell their audience that vaccines will kill them and masks are terrible, but all employees are mandated to be vaccinated and if you aren’t visible to the audience they are required to wear masks. Rupert and James don’t want their health insurance premiums to go up.
Oh, the Eagles, seriously? CCR, the Allman Brothers, and Lynard Skynard I agree, but if I never hear “Hotel California” again I will be thrilled.
@Perun2548, i think you’re wearing the wrong outfit for beach volley ball 🙂
hi, kryten! and yes, i had trouble commenting too.
Yes, but not for Perun who is a war god.
Ahhhh yes! Gotta love Slavic mythology! In fact, I think my next character I create (probably in The Elder Scrolls Online I’ll name Perun, as that will fit in nicely with the Elder Scrolls universe which is based upon the D&D mythology). Thanks Bryan!👍😎 Thinking up character names is always a PITA! You can see my current character, with 2 of my current kitty pals, on T. 😉 😀
(Sent you a DM on T. Partly to make sute it’s working — sometimes for whatever illogical T reason, it doesn’t) & to give you some useful T info & my next (maybe) Pi project! Way past time I play with the Pi again).
Hiya hipparchia! 👋 I really hope all is well with you.😎
I used Perun in the old days with Usenet at a couple of news groups.
I want to get a Pi4 8GB because I’m tired of messing around with Win 10 BSODs. Win 11 looks to be unfinished and flaky, so that’s going nowhere.
My old usenet, UUCP & BBS nic was Wizard86! Another nic given to me by a lady friend. It was 1986 & I loved Get Smart! Go figure… 😆
Sadly, it seems W10 is better than Win11! One of my main go-to YT Tech news channels is Paul’s Hardware. He put’s out an end of week Tech news of the week wrap-up. He call’s W11 the new W8!
I just tweeted the latest. He’s NOT impressed at all! By much of anything techy this week! He’s good to follow if you don’t want to wade through a dozen news sites & just want a nice summery. 😀
https://twitter.com/Kryten_42/status/1447462892446490624
Oh! Bad Tux commented on my Elders Scrolls Online tweet with my “kitties”. We chatted a bit. I really hope he’s getting ‘life’ sorted. I know what a pain that can be!
I was on dial-up with ever newer Hayes modems getting up to 64k when DSL was finally available to provide a big jump. I did work at the university which gave me access to T1.
None of the reviews I’ve seen were positive, some noting a performance penalty if you were using AMD processors. Most felt it wasn’t worth the hardware upgrades M$ wanted to run it.
Do you know anyone on the tech side who isn’t a motor-mouth?
‘Tux has been looking for a house for some time, so finally landing one in the Bay area is good news, but home ownership in California is a career on its own. I noticed he is already working on it. Well he’s still young enough, with the necessary tools to deal with the faults and problems that will keep coming up.
I actually didn’t find a house in the Bay area. I found one in Sacramento and told my boss I was telecommuting for the rest of my career there. At this point I’m four years away from early retirement so not caring too much about what work wants and doesn’t want. They can either keep me (and the 10 years of knowledge I have in their entire infrastructure, since I created *all* of it), or fire me (in which case meh, I move on, I have enough savings to pay the bills with part time jobs until I can retire for real). I’m that older employee the bosses hate — the ones who won’t take their sh*t anymore ;).
And yeah, it’s the usual maintenance stuff. Fan went out on the air conditioner. Yay. Garage door quit opening. Yay. Blew the leaves out of the gutters and removed gutter guards that weren’t working. Yay. Just finished putting up a garden shed for all the stuff that doesn’t fit in the garage. Yay. There’s other work to be done too — the threshold for the garage side door rotted away and the previous owner’s dog ate the trim above it (yay), the toilet in the master bedroom has a leak and needs to be replaced (actual crack in the china because they overtightened when they installed a bidet, not a leaky flapper) yay, and so forth. That said, it’s no worse than the last rental I lived in, and *much* cheaper compared to living in the Bay Area.
Hi Badtux. Good luck with the move and ‘real life’ in general! Do not blame you a bit for opting to telecommute. Especially now.
I’m living in a 2 bedroom semi-detached unit built in the 50’s (double brick & a corrugated roof – great in heavy rain) Luckily I like the sound of rain on the roof, and I own 2 pairs of excellent enclosed headphones! I pay AU$180 / wk (the other 5 Units here are paying AU$220 / wk since Jan 2020.) The landlord knows me well & knows I will sue the arse off them for all the faults in the unit if they raise it so mach as $1! I ‘let it slip’ to the agent that I received some legal advice from the Victorian Tenants Association after the previous Agent that was replaced late 2019 sent ALL the Units fault reports & Tenants complains, with images, to them. 😈😏 So… I’m just keeping the inside as clean & comfy as I can for al long as I can. they is no Statute of Limitations on filing, and they will have to pay me a large portion of the rent from the time the problems were first reported & documented.
Most YT tech channels have turned into ‘motormouths’ because of the YT algorithms and viewers with short attention spans. They had to cut the length of the vid. Still a few don’t care about any of that. like Level1Tech (and they know what they are talking about! A nice bonus.) Check out the latest, has a lot of relevant news for you guys! 😉 😀 A good bonus is they understand, and use, irony and satire a lot. They are one team member down as Krista is on Hol’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKxSZezOWRE
This is one from about a week ago with Krista. 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To3iMd0CRGo&list=RDCMUC4w1YQAJMWOz4qtxinq55LQ&index=8
When I started at Modem Technology as R&D Manager after getting out of the Military, we sued Hays for copying our 2400 baud UDM2400 Modem. And we won in AU. They couldn’t sell them in AU.
The last house I rented had a shed roof, so I definitely got to listen to the rain on the roof. This house has a concrete tile roof plus 18 inches of insulation in the attic, so no rain sounds on the roof, sigh. The upside is that it stays nice and warm in the winter and nice and cool in the summer.
The only tech news that matters to me right now is the chip shortage tech news. I want to buy a small pickup truck to make it easier to carry materials to fix up my house, and they are scarce on the ground here. The local dealership has four (4) Ford Rangers on the lot, when usually they have dozens, and they’re all the quad cab model which I don’t want (I want a work truck, duh, with a longer bed). They have dozens on order, but they’re all waiting for chips before being shipped to the dealership. GRRR!
My bad on your location, Badtux, I just assumed when you mentioned buying a house on the Bluebird of electrons. Fixing garage doors seems to be a problem for many/most of the people I know with garages.
I have a shingle roof on the house but metal awnings over the windows so I get hear the rain until the wind picks up and then it’s beating against the glass.
I’m with you on pick-ups. I want a 90s style Toyota SR5 work truck. I guess I may have to get a Canadian Toyota Hi-Lux, as they are more useful for my needs. But I’m not ready to buy anything until the chips start flowing because the prices are absurd.
Level 1 are my kind of tech people, Kryten. The Windows 11 review is a REAL review of what a problem it’s going to be. After 10 I’m going to Linux which does everything I want down without the annoying quirks, like telling me that my drivers are up to date, when 7 of them needed upgrading to stop the recurring BSODs for IRQ problems.
US $580/month for a two bedroom is reasonable in my neighborhood, which is still middle class. A new two bedroom townhouse rents for US $1400/month.
Hayes made solid external modems that were easy to shift from the Apple boxes to the PCs and used standard commands. I used Prometheus boards on the builds above 80286s that were 64k. The phone lines are buried here, so they tend to survive hurricanes unlike the cable system.
Nissan just released a new 2022 Frontier pickup truck that looks pretty good. Smaller than the other “midsize” trucks (which are the same size as a 1990’s Ford F-150, sheesh). Unfortunately all they have here in our area are the quad cabs, which are useless play trucks since they don’t have a full size bed.
Right, I want a pick-up truck, not a sedan with no trunk lid. I want something I throw a sheet of plywood in and not have to worry about it coming out of the bed. No one is interested in selling work trucks. It looks like they are reserved for fleet sales.
I had a 1985 Chevy S10 with the 8 foot bed. That sucker was *so* useful. They don’t sell a compact truck with an 8 foot bed anymore. I sold it for almost nothing because the transmission was going bad and I was moving off the farm anyhow, I had no idea at the time that the truck was literally irreplaceable….
I had a landlord with an S10 and we would collect all kinds of things (appliances, furniture, building supplies). It was lower at the tailgate than standard pick-ups which made it easier to load and unload. It finally died at about 200k. I miss my 1988 Toyota with the R-23 engine and manual everything. It never left me stranded and was easy to maintain and when something went wrong. I bought the shop manual with the truck, so it was simple.