Update of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony piece.

The video of the 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony is available online, so please, give your brain a good time and check it out:

• Part 1: Pre-show Risk Cabaret Concert by The Penny-wise Guys, and the very, very beginning of the ceremony.
• Part 2: Lots of introductions. Several past winners return. Benoit Mandelbrot’s keynote address.
• Part 3: Awarding of several prizes. First 2 acts of the mini-opera. The 24/7 Lectures.
• Part 4: Awarding of the rest of the prizes. Win-a-Date contest. Thrilling conclusion of the mini-opera.

Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday.

(From the Ig Nobel Prizes site: “The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.”

Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for calculating the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed
REFERENCE: “Blink-Free Photos, Guaranteed,” Velocity, June 2006

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(From the Ig Nobel Prizes site: “The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.”

C.W. Moeliker, of Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
[REFERENCE: "The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)" C.W. Moeliker, Deinsea, vol. 8, 2001, pp. 243-7.]

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(From the Ig Nobel Prizes site: “The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.”

The 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held last night and it was a doozy.

This year’s features included the “Big Bank Theory” opera (wherein stylish bankers in a swanky Wall Street bar explained the explosive rise and fall of big banking and big bankers – how banking started, money-wise, from nothing and ended in the biggest explosion (of socioeconomic proportions) ever encountered by man), the Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest, a little girl whining “PLEASE STOP. I’M BORED.” loudly over and over again when an award recipient went over their allotted thank you speech time, and, as always, actual Nobel Laureates handing out the Ig Nobel prizes.

The award winners were the big draw of course, and this year included:

• A curiously popular Ig Nobel Prize in Public Health: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander. There was a live demonstration by Dr. Elena Bodnar using Nobel Laureates as the “needy bystander” test subjects (and just how Dr. Bodnar managed to get two gas mask brassieres along with her non-gas mask brassiere under that little black dress, much less off in front of a theater full of people while (mostly) maintaining proper public decorum, is anyone’s guess).
• Ig Nobel Prize in Chemisty: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.
• Ig Nobel Prize in Veterinary Medicine: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.

Robert Matthews of Aston University, England, for his studies of Murphy’s Law, and especially for demonstrating that toast often falls on the buttered side. [REFERENCE: "Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the fundamental constants," "European Journal of Physics," vol.16, no.4, July 18, 1995, p. 172-6.]

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(From the Ig Nobel Prizes site: “The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.”

Ivan R. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don’t get headaches.

• Reference: “Cure for a Headache,” Ivan R Schwab, British Journal of Ophthalmology, vol. 86, 2002, p. 843.
• Reference: “Woodpeckers and Head Injury,” Philip R.A. May, Joaquin M. Fuster, Paul Newman and Ada Hirschman, Lancet, vol. 307, no. 7957, February28, 1976, pp. 454-5.

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(From the Ig Nobel Prizes site: “The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.”

Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B. Cassano of the University of Pisa, and Hagop S. Akiskal of the University of California (San Diego), for their discovery that, biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. (Abstract)

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(From the Ig Nobel Prizes site: “The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.”

Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

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(From the Ig Nobel Prizes site: “The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.”

  

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