Spirit of science lives on

It is that time of the year when people with two or less brain cells are rewarded for their outstanding achievements in science, (‘outstanding’ that is, like a baboon’s bottom in a Miss Universe pageant.)

Yes, dear folks, the Ig Nobel prizes for the year 2008 have been announced.

Ig Nobel 2008

Check out the prize for work on cognitive science, a Japanese research team showed that slime moulds can find their way through mazes. This is something we Indians have known for a long time. The slime moulds found in India are way smarter than those in Japan. Leave aside mazes, the moulds here find their way right into parliament. Let’s see you top that, Japanese goo !!!

And now to the ground breaking work in Biology where a team showed that fleas on dogs jump higher than fleas on cats. After having completed this momentous task, the team has decided to spend the rest of the year scratching themselves.

The research that concerns me most is the one on Coco Cola. Two teams were awarded the Ig Nobel in Chemistry. One team found that Coco Cola was an effective spermicide while the other team showed just the opposite. I don’t even want to think about how they went about researching this but my bet is that they worked very closely with the team which was awarded the Economics prize. Anyway, I believe that as long as men stick to just drinking coke, they will be ok.

The physics award went to the research which showed that heaps of string and hair will tangle up in knots eventually. Personally though I feel it would have been a lot more useful if they tried to find out if heaps of string already in knots would eventually untangle themselves and if it works on tongues too (that would surely help me)

Of course, there are awards given away in other areas as well. But I dare not mention all of them here because you may find it hard to resist laughter.

And that could be dangerous if you are drinking coke...


[In case you missed my last year's Ig Nobel update, here it is -
Pushing the frontiers of science ]