Alarm clock that ran away & hid CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, OCTOBER 08, 2005 01:34:21 PM ]
WASHINGTON: Did you hear about the alarm clock that ran away and hid out of your reach at first ring, thus certifiably forcing you out of bed?
MIT's Gauri Nanda invented the "Clocky" in a bid to "humanize technology," and offer a practical solution to waking up issues, besides theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday. The effort won her the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for Economics on Thursday from the Annals of Improbable Research, a quirky journal that spoofs the Nobel Prize and recognizes the more idiosyncratic routes among human endeavours.
Among other Ig Nobel winners this year was Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota in Chemistry "for conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?" and Gregg Miller of Oak Grove, Missouri, for Medicine, for inventing Neuticles -- artificial replacement testicles for dogs, which are available in three sizes, and three degrees of firmness.
The 2005 Prize for Literature went to the Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, "for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters -- General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others -- each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them."
Indians have a striking record of winning Ig Nobels even as they disdain the alternative Nobel Prize which is awarded around the same time. Among previous Indian winners are Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa for Physics in 2004 (for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping), K.P. Sreekumar and G. Nirmalan of Kerala Agricultural University for Mathematics in 2002 (for "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants") and Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, for Public Health in 2001, (for their probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents.)
Last year, the Vatican was awarded the Economics prize for outsourcing prayers to India. But the most celebrated Indian winner (for Peace, in 2003) remains Lal Bihari of Uttar Pradesh for a triple accomplishment: First, 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.
While many winners cheerfully accept the award and attend the much hooted ceremony (as Gauri Nanda did this year) where the prizes are given by real Nobel laureates, the Ignobel committee said Lal Bihari overcame the handicap of being dead and managed to obtain a passport from the Indian government so that he could travel to Harvard to accept his Prize but the US government refused to allow him into the country.
Other 2005 winners
Biology: To a group of Australian researchers for painstakingly smelling and cataloging the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed
NUTRITION: Dr. Yoshiro Nakamats of Tokyo, Japan, for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting)
PHYSICS: John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland, Australia, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 -- in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years.