Pushing the frontiers of science

The Ig-Nobel prizes for 2007 were announced last week. Mr. Einstein please make way, here come the next set of breakthrough achievements that may impact science in ways unknown and preferably it will stay that way.

2007 ig nobel winners

Of interest is the guy who won the Ig-Nobel for chemistry. He had this burst of inspiration and discovered a way to extract vanilla out of...hold your breath....cow dung !!. I did warn you to hold your breath, did I not?

I seriously wonder how this guy went about finding it out. As is wont in science, achievements are never a one step process. So I figure, this guy spent many hours and many unsuccessful attempts before he hit the right flavour...

Attempt 1: "Hmmm....dung"

Attempt 2: "Yuck...still dung"

Attempt 3: "Umm..hey...Big Mac...wait...no, still dung"

Attempt 4: "WOW..Vanilla....!!."
"Honey, sorry for the fight yesterday, here I made you some ice cream"


Then there is that team of researchers who showed that "rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards". Interestingly, neither can I. It proves that I am at least as intelligent as laboratory rats and automatically a lot more intelligent than this particular research team.

We also have the winner of the Ig-Nobel for medicine for his report on "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects". I am sure he has a nice thank you speech prepared but he may not be able to deliver it since it is pretty inconvenient when you have a sword sticking out of your throat (I am guessing, side effect number 3).

These scientists should be rewarded for their hard work. Personally, I would buy them all Big Macs and would like to tell them "funny so never was shit bull".

If you did not get that, maybe the rats could help.