The Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded yesterday — last night, in fact, as we here in SILS were holding our Louis Round Wilson Academy shindig. Coincidence?
Some of the more amusing prizes, in my opinion were:
- Physics, for a seriously longitudinal study.
- Literature, for spam as a short narrative form.
- Peace, for making a a locust watch Star Wars. What I want to know is, how can you tell if the locust is paying attention?
And in the best academic tradition, there was a fair bit of scatology: both the Nutrition and Fluid dynamics prizes were for poo-related studies. One involving penguins. No, I’m not kidding.
I live for three forms of recognition: receiving tenure, having my computer be the one to find THE signal from aliens and so being listed as a co-discoverer, and winning an Ig Nobel Prize. Sadly there’s no category for Information Science. Well, at least tenure and detecting aliens are within the realm of possibility.