The Ig Nobel Prizes!

Every year the Ig Nobel prizes are handed out at Harvard Universtity by real Nobel Prize winners to dudes who do research that makes you go "eh? someone really needed to find out THAT?" Among this years esteemed Ig Nobel laureates are Ramesh Subramaniam who publishshed a study on the dynamis of hula-hooping and a couple of guys who published their findings on the effects of country music on suicide. (eh?)

The Vatican got the coveted Ig Nobel in Economics for outsourcing prayers to India. (Who said religion cannot keep up with the times!) Daisuke Inoue, the inventor of Karaoke got the Peace prize for 'providing an entirely new way for people to tolerate each other'. (Ask my roommates who have suffered my singing in the bathroom)

You have to love this guy who won the prize in Chemistry last year for chemically investigating a statue in Japan that failed to attract pigeons.

Also in 2003, the Peace prize was awarded to Lal Bihari from Uttar Pradesh, India for 'leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; Second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and Third, for creating the Association of Dead People.'

Before I burst out laughing, I have to mention these two guys. The Interdisciplinary award for a 'comprehensive survey of belly-button lint' and 'estimating the total surface area in Indian Elephants'.