[kj] (ot) Ignobel Prize winners 2003

[Phillipps Marc]

The award for Physics was a good one :o)

Marc.  


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/03/wig03.xml&sS
heet=/news/2003/10/03/ixworld.html

Fame at last for duck that met an ignoble end
By Roger Highfield
(Filed: 03/10/2003)


The first scientist to record homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, 
the inventors of Murphy's law and a group of Swedes who trained chickens to 
distinguish men from women were among the winners of the "Ig Nobel" prizes 
announced yesterday.

At a spoof ceremony at Harvard last night, the annual antidote to the 
mainstream Nobel prizes recognised achievements that "first make people 
laugh, and then make them think".


Kees Moeliker won the prize for research into gay mallards
The prizewinners included:

Medicine: A University College London team, led by Dr Eleanor Maguire, for 
showing that the brains of London taxi drivers were more highly developed 
than their fellow citizens.

Biology: Kees Moeliker, of Natuurmuseum Rotterdam in the Netherlands, for 
first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard 
duck. It happened after a drake flew into the museum's glass facade and was 
raped by another male for 75 minutes.

Interdisciplinary award: A Swedish team for its study entitled "Chickens 
Prefer Beautiful Humans". Published in the journal Human Nature, the 
scientists from Stockholm University described how chickens "showed 
preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences".

Engineering: The late John Paul Stapp, the late Edward A Murphy Jr and 
George Nichols, for jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law, the basic 
principle that "if there are two or more ways to do something, and one of 
those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it".

Physics: A team from Australia for their irresistible report "An Analysis of

the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces", published in 
Applied Ergonomics.

Psychology: Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli of the University

of Rome, and Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, for their insightful 
report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities".

Literature: John Trinkaus, Zicklin School of Business, New York City, for 
collecting data about annoyances and anomalies of daily life, such as what 
percentage of young people wear baseball caps back to front.

Peace prize: Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for leading an active life

even though he had been declared legally dead; for waging "a lively 
posthumous campaign" against bureaucracy and greedy relatives; and for 
creating the Association of Dead People.



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