**Authors Note** I have just upgraded my posting editor and can’t figure out how to change the colors! My apologies! Shouldn’t that be one of the main features??? ARGH – well – it’s October again and we are coming up to the IG Nobel Prize. Here is some background =
Learning new things is always exciting, it drives the human mind. In searching we can open more doors, discover fruitful pathways, harbor new experiences. We all need to break through, somehow, someway. Education is the key, the engine to achieving your destiny to the real journey. And then your given an award… EDIT – FIGURED OUT THE COLORS ^.^
Not just a Nobel Prize… but a “IG” Nobel Prize.
IG Nobel Prize?
- The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The stated aim of the prizes is to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”.
Essentially, they are given to people whose research is highly unusual or seemingly trivial, but none-the-less is interesting and sometimes even important.
The first Ig Nobels were created in 1991 by Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of the Annals of Improbable Research, and the master of ceremonies at all subsequent awards ceremonies. Awards were presented at that time for discoveries “that cannot, or should not, be reproduced”.
Ten prizes are awarded each year in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, but also other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research.
The Ig Nobel Prizes recognize genuine achievements, with the exception of three prizes awarded in the first year to fictitious scientists Josiah Carberry, Paul DeFanti, and Thomas Kyle.
The awards are sometimes veiled criticism (or gentle satire), as in the two awards given for homeopathy research, prizes in “science education” to the Kansas and Colorado state boards of education for their stance regarding the teaching of evolution, and the prize awarded to Social Text after the Sokal Affair. Most often, however, they draw attention to scientific articles that have some humorous or unexpected aspect.
Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell, to research on the “five-second rule“, a tongue-in-cheek belief that food dropped on the floor will not become contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds.
In 2010, Sir Andre Geim became the first person to receive both a Nobel Prize and an individual Ig Nobel prize
Ceremony
Throwing paper airplanes onto the stage is a long-standing tradition at the Ig Nobels. In past years, physics professor Roy Glauber swept the stage clean of the airplanes as the official “Keeper of the Broom” for years. Glauber could not attend the 2005 awards because he was traveling to Stockholm to claim a genuine Nobel Prize in Physics.
The “Parade of Ignitaries” brings various supporting groups into the hall. At the 1997 ceremonies, a team of “cryogenic sex researchers distributed a pamphlet titled “Safe Sex at Four Kelvin“. Delegates from the Museum of Bad Art are often on hand to display some pieces from their collection too.
The prizes are presented to the winners by actual Nobel laureates. One person, Sir Andre Geim, has actually won both an IG Nobel Prize (in 2000) and a real Nobel Prize (in 2010). He won the IG Nobel Prize for an experiment where he and another scientist successfully levitated a frog using magnets. His actual Nobel Prize was won “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”.
During the ceremony, each IG Nobel Prize winner is given 60 seconds to explain their research. If they go over the time, a little girl, “Miss Sweetie Poo”, will walk up to them and yell “Please stop: I’m bored” continually until the speaker stops. It was also once traditional for audience members to throw paper airplanes at the stage while the ceremony was taking place, but this practice has died out in recent years due to safety concerns.