The Idler, Wednesday September 18, 2019

The richest

prizes in

science

HARVARD University has made its annual Ig Nobel Awards for weird scientific discoveries, a spoof of the real Nobel awards that has been running for 29 years. Although it's a spoof, the awards are handed out by real Nobel Prize winners.

According to Huffington Post, this year's winners include Dutch and Turkish researchers who discovered that Romania has the yuckiest and most germ-ridden banknotes; an Italian scientist who has discovered that pizza is actually good for you; and a group of researchers who have discovered that the clickers used to train dogs are also very handy in training surgeons.

Each winner is given a prize of 10 trillion Zimbabwe dollars and has to make a one-minute acceptance speech, in competition with an 8-year-old girl whining" "Please stop, I'm bored!"

The awards event is produced by the science humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, and co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.

It's good to know that academic standards are being maintained.

 

 

Times three

IT WAS a case of 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. Christina Malone-Brown was born to her delighted parents on September 9 (9/11) in Germantown, Tennessee, in the US. It was 9.11pm. And she weighed 9 pounds 11 ounces, according to Sky News.

Christina's mother, Cametrione, said her baby girl had managed to offer a positive moment on a day overshadowed by the 2001 terror attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington, as well as in Pennsylvania.

When she was born, the doctor cried a number of times: "Oh my goodness, I've got a 9/11, 9/11, 9/11."

 

 

Another Nessie?

DOES China have its own version of the Loch Ness Monster? Footage has appeared on a blog site of a long, black creature manoeuvring in the Yangtze River, according to the BBC.

But nobody can say what it is. A scientist says it is probably just a large "water snake". Adding to the confusion, a length of black cloth has since washed up on rocks in the river. Is this what they saw, simply floating?

It seems China has indeed found its Lock Ness Monster. Nobody has actually seen Nessie – it's all strange ripples and inconclusive photographs. But he/she is most certainly a presence and a powerful boost to the Scottish tourism industry.

 

 

Scary stats

THE crime statistics released the other day are simply horrendous. Into what kind of quagmire have we sunk? It's captured in a grim little poem that comes this way, titled Bedtime Story for South Africa.

The doors are all locked, the security gates too,

Burglar-barred windows make it look like a zoo.

The alarms are all activated, the cars are pulled in,

The electric fence is buzzing, the motion beams glow dim.

The rotties are snoring in baskets in the hall

So they can't be poisoned over the wall.

The gun's out the safe and under the bed,

Our prayers (to survive the night) have been said.

So nighty-night, we hope you'll sleep tight,

We'll leave it to Eskom to switch out the light!

 

 

Tailpiece

TWO musicians are walking down the street. One says: "Who was the piccolo I saw you with last night?"

"That was no piccolo, that was my fife."

 

Last word

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. - George Bernard Shaw