Ig Nobel Prizes, Serenity, & Zombies!!!
Deviant Behavior
Dan Alban
Issue date: 10/13/05 Section: Opinion
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There's no real unified theme this week, just a trio of eclectic items:
Ig Nobels Ignertaining
Last Thursday, I attended the 15th First Annual (yes, you read that right) Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Sanders Theater. A parody of the Nobel prize, Ig Nobels are awarded to bizarre research that "first makes you laugh, and then makes you think" or to achievements that "cannot, or should not, be reproduced." The science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research awards the Igs.
The event itself is a zany/cheesy themed ceremony (this year's theme was infinity) which includes a number of bizarre rituals, a mini-opera, the very brief 24/7 lectures by leaders in their field (a complete technical description of a field in twenty-four seconds, followed by a clear summary that anyone can understand in seven words), and ten award presentations of the Ig Nobel to the winners (if they attend) by actual Nobel laureates. All the while, the audience delights in constantly throwing paper airplanes at the stage and occasionally chanting.
The best part about the Igs, however, is the winners. Winning the Ig Nobel for medicine this year was Gregg Miller of Missouri "for inventing Neuticles - artificial replacement testicles for dogs, which are available in three sizes, and three degrees of firmness." A group of Australian researchers, including a fellow at the Australian Wine Research Institute, won the Ig in biology "for painstakingly smelling and cataloging the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed." Several European researchers won an Ig in fluid dynamics for "for using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin, as detailed in their report 'Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh - Calculations on Avian Defaecation.'"
While most Igs are awarded because of the hilarious nature of the research, they are sometimes awarded to poke fun, as with this year's Ig for literature, awarded to "the Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters."
Serenity - Best SF Film in Years
Not only is Serenity the best science fiction film since The Matrix, it is also one of the best films of the year, in any genre. A low-tech space western with no aliens or laser guns, Serenity is a follow-up to the prematurely cancelled TV series Firefly, but remains easily accessible to the casual viewer. Created by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the world of Serenity is political realist's version of Star Wars in which the rebels lost and the governing authority isn't a cackling evil empire but an ostensibly benevolent democracy, the Alliance.