BS: lg Nobel prizes......

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: GUEST,Skipy
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 03:55 PM

So one day she said to me "does my bum look big in this"
my answer "of course it does it looks big in skin so putting a skirt on it won't help"
ERROR!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: gnu
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 08:57 AM

Ah, but the mass of my ass, no matter the elevation, would still be 1f. Where, f = fat.

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Layah
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 08:47 AM

Not only is all life at 1g, but so is all dead people, rocks, metals, water, and digital watches. Everything on Earth is at 1g. Or to be more precise, approximately 1g, as it varies by location, elevation, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: John O'L
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 09:22 PM

Another aside:

Alexander Downer, the Australian Foreign Minister, was last year awarded the Nobble Peace Prize for having done so much to nobble peace.

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: GUEST,Skipy
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 05:37 PM

all life on this planet is at 1g.
Life on our moon is at approx. 1/6th g.
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 03:38 PM

He IS so affiliated, but has been overshadowed (so to speak) by Miss Sweety-Poo.

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Charley Noble
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 12:57 PM

Well, that shut them up!

Cheerily,
Charley Ignoble

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 01:05 PM

Beware of Charley Ignoble,
Whose aspirations are global;
He's sure to win first prize,
Even if he's forced to bowdlerize,
Or complete a limerick with San Cristobal!

Charley Ignoble

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: GUEST,JennyO
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 10:08 AM

I was wondering that too, Charlie. Maybe he should post an ignoble song here, so that he can be dishonored in a suitable fashion :-)

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: GUEST,Charley Noble
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 09:59 AM

I wonder if my evil twin, Charley Ignoble, is somehow associated with this international award program. He should be honered, or dishonored so to speak.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 09:45 AM

Satire aside, a real research project with Chimpanzees established their cherry juice as a monetary device that they could spend to "buy" TV programming of their choice.
#1 choice among the males was pictures of the hind quarters of female champanzees.
#2 choice was certain members of their "tribe" that they personally knew.

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 09:04 AM

From the third edition of "Selected Papers" from The Journal Of Irreproducible Results", I find the following papers, among others:

The History of Thought as a Closed Linear System, by Yehuda Spewer.
Weekend Scientist: Let's Defend Against Cruise Missiles, by D. I. Radin.
Behavioral Genetics of the Sidehill Gouger, by Prof. Lawrence M. Dill.
The Thermodynamics of Eeyore, by R. F. Irvine.
National Geographic: the Doomsday Machine, by George H. Kaub.

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: GUEST,sandra in sydney
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 07:08 AM

as I was going to say before I somehow posted

Mention of the 'Stress Analysis of a strapless gow', ' Journal of Irreproducible result's & the 'Worm Runners Digest' took me to my bookcase where I brushed the dust off 'A Random Walk in Science' (London, Institute of Physics, 1973). it's a treasure - 150 'comments, both light & serious, by scientists'.

It's a lot of fun (which is why this post has taken forever to submit).

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: GUEST,sandra in sydney
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 06:44 AM

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 04:12 AM

And of course there's that cute book of ten years' back called "Fup"
-About a duck.

"I was immortal, till I died"

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Boab
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 01:37 AM

Just a wee aside. Our local water-ski club used to bear the name "The Fog Duckers". They were based in a lakeshore pub called the "Fish and Duck". It wasn't advisable to get pissed in the Fish and Duck and start telling folks about your sport, or your favourite drinking spot......

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 03:12 PM

The Worm Runner's Digest was the flip side of the Journal of Biological Psychology.

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: robomatic
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 01:34 PM

Usually Science Friday On National Public Radio has broadcast excerpts from the Ig-Nobel awards including Little Miss Sweetie-Poo. I'm pretty sure I've taped it in past years.


There is a reference above to the annals of improbable research. What I'm familiar with is the " Journal Of Irreproducible Results" which has been around for decades.


I used to think that JIR had led to the book: "Stress Analysis Of A Strapless Evening Gown" but the source I found indicates it came from articles from "The Worm Runner's Digest."

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: frogprince
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:45 PM

Now I'm afraid that, at moments when I would have said "F**k a duck", I'm gonna find myself saying "F**k a DEAD duck"; then people will look at me really funny, and it will be just too much trouble to try to explain...

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 12:00 PM

Actually it was the 2003 igNoble prizes:

BIOLOGY
C.W. Moeliker, of Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
[REFERENCE: "The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)" C.W. Moeliker, Deinsea, vol. 8, 2001, pp. 243-7. Photographs can be viewed at ]
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Kees Moeliker.

The original publication was 2001.

A

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 11:43 AM

Send 'er in, Amos! AIR loves limericks.

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:58 AM

A toast to the brave mallard duck
Whom nothing deters from a fuck
When his mind's set on rape!
Even death, in the mate,
Or the fact that his doe is a buck!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 09:01 AM

Oh, man! I really, really want to attend the ceremonies, but can't ever get away to do it! You can subscribe to "Mini-AIR" -- and I do.

AIR is a child of the Journal of Irreproducible Results (of sainted memory), which began, I think, in the 1960s.

If you don't know AIR and the Ig-Nobles, please check 'em out!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Crystal
Date: 09 Mar 05 - 05:43 AM

He's only just got the igNobel prize for the duck thing???? I read that paper when it first came out and nearly wet myself laughing. I always use it to counter arguements that homosexuality is "unnatural"!

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 10:06 PM

'Snap' Bunnahabhain.

Now who has to take something off?

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 10:05 PM

Here's a link

IgNoble Awards

Subject: RE: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 10:03 PM

That might help.

Ig noble home page

Subject: BS: lg Nobel prizes......
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 09:57 PM

I came across this odd award for scientific research. Anyone heard of it.

Be warned the second article is not for the feint hearted, espially for duck lovers.

Peer review

Ig Nobel Prizes 2: Why chickens prefer beautiful humans by Marc Abrahams

Tim Radford
Thursday November 4, 2004
The Guardian

Without Marc Abrahams, science would be a duller place. People would still write papers with titles like "Chicken plucking as a measure of tornado wind speed" or "Acute management of the zipper-entrapped penis". But who would know about them?

Abrahams, a columnist for this newspaper, has devoted his energies to the wilder shores of the public awareness of science, first with his Annals of Improbable Research and then his Ig Nobel Awards at Harvard, held just before the real ceremony each autumn, and enthusiastically attended by Nobel winners and an eight-year-old mistress of ceremonies, Miss Sweetie-Poo, who says "Please stop, I'm bored" if an acceptance speech goes on for too long. His rubric for the qualifications for an Ig (the trademark is a measure of its growing status) is as follows: first it makes you laugh, then it makes you think.

So this book is a salute to scientists like CW Moeliker of the Natuurmuseum, Rotterdam, who reported the first case of homosexual necrophilia in a mallard (he turned up at the ceremony with a stuffed duck) or Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, who studied the containers used by his patients to deliver urine samples ("one of the most astonishing was a Mum roll-on deodorant..."). Who could forget a paper entitled "The constipated serviceman: prevalence among deployed US troops"? Researchers collected data on bowel movements during the 1991 Iraq war. In his acceptance speech, one confided that he had been told by a marine "When we're out in the field, we're scared shitless."

Some awards are sardonic, some solemn. An Ig economics prize went to the man who thought of renting out a whole country (Liechtenstein) for corporate events. And a science education prize to the Kansas State Board of Education, which blocked the teaching of evolution. Yes, it makes you think, too.


Necrophilia among ducks ruffles research feathers

Donald MacLeod
Tuesday March 8, 2005

The strange case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck pushed out the boundaries of knowledge in a rather improbable way when it was recorded by Dutch researcher Kees Moeliker.

It may have ruffled a few feathers, but it earned him the coveted Ig Nobel prize for biology awarded for improbable research, and next week he will be recounting his findings to UK audiences on the Ig Nobel tour.

Ducks behave pretty badly, it seems. It is not so much that up to one in 10 of mallard couples are homosexual - no one would raise an eyebrow in the liberal Netherlands - but they regularly indulge in "attempted rape flights" when they pursue other ducks with a view to forcible mating. "Rape is a normal reproductive strategy in mallards," explains Mr Moeliker.

As he recounts in his seminal paper, The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard anas platyrhynchos, he was in his office in the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, when he was alerted by a bang to the fact a bird had crashed into the glass facade of the building. "I went downstairs immediately to see if the window was damaged, and saw a drake mallard (anas platyrhynchos) lying motionless on its belly in the sand, two metres outside the facade. The unfortunate duck apparently had hit the building in full flight at a height of about three metres from the ground. Next to the obviously dead duck, another male mallard (in full adult plumage without any visible traces of moult) was present. He forcibly picked into the back, the base of the bill and mostly into the back of the head of the dead mallard for about two minutes, then mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force, almost continuously picking the side of the head.

"Rather startled, I watched this scene from close quarters behind the window until 19.10 hours during which time (75 minutes) I made some photographs and the mallard almost continuously copulated his dead congener. He dismounted only twice, stayed near the dead duck and picked the neck and the side of the head before mounting again. The first break (at 18.29 hours) lasted three minutes and the second break (at 18.45 hours) lasted less than a minute. At 19.12 hours, I disturbed this cruel scene. The necrophilic mallard only reluctantly left his 'mate': when I had approached him to about five metres, he did not fly away but simply walked off a few metres, weakly uttering a series of two-note 'raeb-raeb' calls (the 'conversation-call' of Lorentz 1953). I secured the dead duck and left the museum at 19.25 hours. The mallard was still present at the site, calling 'raeb-raeb' and apparently looking for his victim (who, by then, was in the freezer)."

Mr Moeliker suggests the pair were engaged in a rape flight attempt. "When one died the other one just went for it and didn't get any negative feedback - well, didn't get any feedback," he said.

His findings have provoked a lot of interest - especially in Britain for some reason - but no other recorded cases of duck necrophilia. However, Mr Moeliker was informed of an American case involving a squirrel and a dead partner, although in this case it is not known whether the necrophilia observed was homosexual or not as the victim had been run over by a truck shortly before the incident.