Every Year I Wait With...

...anticipation for the Ig Nobel Awards. That time has arrived:

Ponytail Math

Device that shuts people up, dynamics of sloshing coffee

Now those sound like valuable advances in science, as long as they aren't used on me (especially the first one).

Dead salmon brain activity

That could very well have human applications, too, dontcha think?

This one certainly does. But, alas, they caved:

"But what would have been the most spectacular display of science was called off at the last second. The Ig Nobel Prize for medicine went to a team led by Emmanuel Ben-Soussan, a medical researcher at the Clinique de l’Alma in Paris, for developing a technique that prevents the rare but dangerous problem of gas explosions during colonoscopy. (Yes, intestines really can explode.) A human subject was brought on stage for a demonstration. The doctor got as far as putting on a rubber glove before the demo was cancelled for fear of offending the audience."

And did you know that if you lean to the left, the Eiffel Tower looks smaller? What could we do without that knowledge? Perhaps there's a lesson here for folks of the leftard persuasion, too. They tend not to see the big picture and what they do see is bent out of shape.

Sure beats the real Nobel Prizes, in any case, especially the Peace Prize.