The Ig Nobel Prizes are out!

[beej@mindspring.net]

The Ig Nobel prizes are out. For more check out
<http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-top.html>

This year's winners include:

SOCIOLOGY: Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, for doing his PhD
thesis on the sociology of Canadian donut shops.

PHYSICS: Dr. Len Fisher of Bath, England and Sydney, Australia for calculating
the optimal way to dunk a biscuit.  ...and...  Professor Jean-Marc
Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, and Belgium, for
calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip.

LITERATURE: The British Standards Institution for its six-page specification
(BS-6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea.

SCIENCE EDUCATION: The Kansas Board of Education and the Colorado State Board
of Education, for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin's
theory of evolution any more than they believe in Newton's theory of
gravitation, Faraday's and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, or Pasteur's
theory that germs cause disease.

MEDICINE: Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, for carefully collecting,
classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose
when submitting urine samples.

CHEMISTRY: Takeshi Makino, president of The Safety Detective Agency in Osaka,
Japan, for his involvement with S-Check, an infidelity detection spray that
wives can apply to their husbands' underwear.

BIOLOGY: Paul Bosland of The Chile Pepper Institute, at New Mexico State
University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, for breeding a spiceless jalapeno chile
pepper.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, Korea, for
inventing the self-perfuming business suit.

PEACE: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for
inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a
flamethrower.

MANAGED HEALTH CARE: The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City
and San Jose, California, for inventing a device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid
women in giving birth -- the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the
table is then rotated at high speed.