Armadillos, Dignified Plants, and Side Effects of Coca-Cola

I missed a great event on Thursday. Not the VP Debate. I watched that. And I patriotically ate a lot of apple pie while doing so. Apple crumb pie from the Jericho Cider Mill. Best pie in the world. Low on goo. I am not a fan of apple pies with high goo ratios. In fact, I'm not a fan of any food with a high goo ratio. Like enormous Cadbury eggs. Just a bad idea. The sugar goo to chocolate ratio... But I digress.

The big event of the night was the awarding of the 2008 Ig Noble Prize Awards. I love the Ig Noble Awards. They make me happy. If you've never heard of them, the Ig Nobles are awarded annually to scientific research and/or academic achievements that "first make you laugh then make you think."

My personal favorite continues to be the 2005 Literature Prize 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 -- General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others -- each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them."

The 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
(text below is quoted from improbable.com)

NUTRITION PRIZE. Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.

PEACE PRIZE. The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.

ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE. Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.

BIOLOGY PRIZE. Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert,, and Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.

MEDICINE PRIZE. Dan Ariely of Duke University, USA, for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE PRIZE. Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University, Japan, Hiroyasu Yamada of Nagoya, Japan, Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, Atsushi Tero of Presto JST, Akio Ishiguro of Tohoku University, and Ágotá Tóth of the University of Szeged, Hungary, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.

ECONOMICS PRIZE. Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that a professional lap dancer's ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings.

PHYSICS PRIZE. Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE. Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA), for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan) for discovering that it is not.

LITERATURE PRIZE. David Sims of Cass Business School, London, UK, for his lovingly written study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations."


Apparently, the winners for cognitive science sang their acceptance speech in three-part harmony. And the winners for chemistry were toasted with bottles of Coke.

I think this is awesome. I also think I owe apologies to several plants.

The Science of Fairy Tales

If you've ever wondered how Rapunzel's scalp could survive a witch and a prince climbing up her hair, you're not alone. I found these articles online:

Inside Science News Service (American Institute of Physics)

National Geographic

Both agree that if Rapunzel were to wrap her hair around a bedpost and then lower it, she'd survive without losing her scalp because the bedpost would act as the anchor point rather than her skull.

I still think it would kind of hurt, though.

The National Geographic article goes on to point out that it would take a lot of effort for a goose to lay a golden egg rather than the normal soft, pliable egg. "The industrious goose would therefore shoot away from its egg with the same coniderable amount of force required to lay the egg."

I really, really like that image.

Farewell, Evil Tree

Remember that evil tree I told you about last month? Its roots had clogged up our pipes, which backed up the kitchen sink, which made the dishwasher overflow, which caused water to seep through the floor into the basement and directly onto our boiler, which caused its control circuits to short out, leaving us with no heat in the middle of the night! (Yes, this really happened.) Well, apparently, what goes around comes around, even for trees.

A few nights ago, there was a big storm and it was really windy outside. Sometime in the middle of the night, my husband and I heard a loud thud. We sat up, exchanged confused glances, and then fell promptly back to sleep. In the morning we found our tree, the very same (evil) tree, ripped off of its stump and lying on our patio. It missed hitting our house by only a couple feet.

Here lies evil tree. Apparently, it really was rotten to the core.

My husband thinks evil tree was trying, once again, to attack us, ending its life in a failed attempt to crush our house. I think evil tree felt remorse for its past misdeeds, and when the wind came howling, missed our house on purpose, as an act of redemption. Either way, evil tree is no more.

Now, how the heck do I get it off my patio?!

Deep Thoughts

Who needs rhetorical questions?


[From a bathroom-stall art exhibit created by artist Silas Kopf. This is part of the faux-graffiti scrawled on the door. It amuses me beyond all reason.]