The 1999 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at a gala ceremony at Harvard's Sanders Theatre on the night of September 30. Here are the new winners:
SOCIOLOGY: Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, for doing his PhD thesis on the sociology of Canadian donut shops.
PHYSICS: Dr. Len Fisher of Bath, England and Sydney, Australia for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit and Professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, and Belgium, for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.
SCIENCE EDUCATION: The Kansas Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education, for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution any more than they believe in Newton's theory of gravitation, Faraday's and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, or Pasteur's theory that germs cause disease. The story about the Kansas Board of Ed meeting, featuring a guy in a gorilla suit and visiting Hare Krishnas was both religious and humorous.
MEDICINE: Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples.
CHEMISTRY: Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan, for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that wives can apply to their husbands' underwear.
BIOLOGY: Paul Bosland of The Chile Pepper Institute, at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, for breeding a spiceless jalapeno chile pepper.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, Korea, for inventing the self-perfuming business suit.
PEACE: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower.
MANAGED HEALTH CARE: The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City and San Jose, California, for inventing a device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth -- the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed.
For more fantastic facts see Annals of Improbably Research HERE.
The Harvard Computer Society (HCS) and the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Society (HRSFA), who co-sponsored the ceremony together with the Annals of Improbable Research.
Do leave a comment to share your thoughts/views or suggestions for a Malaysian version of this list :-). I know my blog readers are very creative with great witty humor. Thanks! Have a great day and a lovely weekend. For those of you of the Christian faith, Blessed Good Friday and Happy Easter!
Anonymous Today is a gift. That's why it's called the PRESENT!
Have a nice Friday