IG NOBEL PRIZES

PROBABILITY: Bert Tolkamp and Marie Haskell for making two

related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down,

the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and second, that once

a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that

cow will lie down again.

PEACE: Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making

it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police,

for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.

PSYCHOLOGY: Anita Eerland and Rolf Zwaan for their study

"Leaning to the left makes the Eiffel Tower seem smaller"

LITERATURE: The US Government General Accountability Office,

for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the

preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.

PHYSIOLOGY: Anna Wilkinson and Ludwig Huber for their study

"No evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise

Geochelone carbonaria".

PHYSICS: Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, and Herman Kingma for

trying to determine why discus throwers become dizzy, and why

hammer throwers don't, in their paper "Dizziness in discus throwers

is related to motion sickness generated while spinning"

PEACE: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for

demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be

solved by running them over with a tank

CHEMISTRY: Makoto Imai and Hideki Tanemura for determining the

ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken

sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying

this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm

PHYSICS: Lianne Parkin and Patricia Priest of the University of Otago,

New Zealand, for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime,

people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the

outside of their shoes.