The Ig Nobel Prizes

The Ig Nobel Awards for this year have been presented at Harvard University. There is nothing ignoble about it, because seven of the ten award winners paid their own fare to come and get the awards. It is prestigious, and fun.

For accepting  the legal principle that plants have dignity, The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and the citizens of Switzerland  get the Peace prize; in case you wanted to know, fleas on dogs  jump higher than fleas on  cats, this discovery won the Biology Ig Nobel; and usefully, Dan Ariely has found that expensive fake medicine is more effective than cheap fake medicine- so don't get your medicines at street corners, choose a pharmacy, preferably air-conditioned: Ariely gets the award for Medicine; and in Cognitive Science, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero, Akio Ishiguro and Agota Toth (so many people!) win the award for their earth-shattering discovery that slime moulds (what are they?) can solve puzzles; in Economics, the discovery that the fertility cycle of a lap dancer affects her tip-earning potential, should improve the earnings at the Wall Street, Dalal Street, and a street here near Parry's Corner which I don't want to name- Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tyber and Brent Jordan applied themselves to this arduous task and have justifiably been rewarded now; And in  case you did not know, Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith have proved scientifically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots, and they walk away with Physcis Ig Nobel. Is Coca-cola a very effective spermicide? Ig Nobel does itself proud by awarding the Chemistry Prize for both the teams that proved and disproved it; And, "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations", wins the Literature Prize. Of course.