Collage 166               H u m o u r N e t               27 OCT 95

Here's one for the "good long-term planning" file: A professor from
a Chicago school of economics recently won a Nobel prize--and had to
split the cash prize 50/50 with his ex-wife.

In her divorce settlement, the wife apparently got a clause awarding
her 50% of the ex-hub's Nobel prize if he won within seven years after
divorce. (Now *that's* good long-term planning!)

The prize was roughly US$1 million--and she collected with about two
weeks to spare before the seven years expired.

C'mon, now--you're telling me this guy couldn't have called up the
Nobel Prize folks (they're easy to reach at 1-800-DIAL-NOBEL) and
asked them to hold off on the prize for another couple of weeks?

(Many thanks to Jim in L.A. for that news snippet.)

(And while we're on the subject of divorce, Angela sends me this
addendum to Dave Barry's "Barbie" piece in Collage 164:

Did you hear that Mattell is coming out with a new 'divorced' Barbie?
Yeah, she comes with all Ken's stuff.

Thanks, Angela! It was well worth the interruption here. And now back
to today's opener ...)

Well, Collage 166 features the more amusing side of Nobel prizes and
"interesting" (ahem!) research. The first piece, contributed by
Chris, is "The 1995 Ig-Nobel Prizes," recognizing individuals whose
achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced." The awards--as
well as the research--are real, and are presented by the Annals of
Improbable Research at Harvard University.

The cutting-edge research deemed worthy enough to receive Ig-Nobel
recognition includes "training pigeons to discriminate between the
paintings of Picasso and Monet," and the "impact of wet underwear on
thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort in the cold."

Thankfully, not all of this ground-breaking research was funded here
in the U.S.--in fact, much of the more, um, *interesting* topics
were funded abroad. And just to prove that we really don't fund
*all* the weird research being performed in the world today, Marc
provides us with _another_ entry from the Annals of Improbable
Research: the odd, entertaining, incisive, and very timely
(Halloween, you know) "Vampire Protection." Included in the piece is
just the abstract; if you want the complete details of this
penetrating study, you can check out their home page:

http://www.uib.no/isf/surprise.htm

Some other research summaries from the Annals of Improbable Research
(AIR) were included in Collage 134; following that Collage, several
people asked me to provide details about AIR and how to subscribe to
their e-mail journal, the "mini-AIR." Once again, Marc scores the
assist; send the command:

subscribe mini-AIR <your name>

to this address:

listproc@air.harvard.edu

That will subscribe you to the mini-AIR e-mail journal. They'll send
you all the info you need when you subscribe.

On to the Collage ...

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1995 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

SUBJ: The 1995 Ig-Nobel Prizes

For those of you following the real Nobel prizes last week, this is
a ceremony held yearly at Harvard, with awards given for actual
research/papers ...

The 1995 Ig-Nobel Prize Winners

The Fifth First Annual Ig-Nobel Prize Ceremony was held at Harvard
University on the evening of Friday, Oct. 6, 1995. Ten prizes were
awarded to individuals whose achievements "cannot or should not be
reproduced." Two of the winners (nutrition and chemistry) were
present, and received their Prizes from (genuine) Nobel Laureates
Sheldon Glashow (Physics '79), Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry '86),
William Lipscomb (Chemistry '76), Joseph Murray (Physiology or
Medicine '90) and Richard Roberts (Physiology or Medicine '93).
Three other winners (physics, literature and dentistry) graciously
sent taped acceptance speeches.

The Ceremony was mounted by The Annals of Improbable Research and
co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society and by Tangents (the
Harvard-Radcliffe mathematical bulletin).

Here is a complete list of the 1995 Ig Nobel Prizewinners.

NUTRITION John Martinez of J. Martinez & Company in Atlanta, for
Luak Coffee, the world's most expensive coffee, which is made from
coffee beans ingested and excreted by the luak (aka, the palm
civet), a bobcat-like animal native to Indonesia.

PHYSICS D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and A.C. Smith, of the
Institute of Food Research, Norwich, England, for their rigorous
analysis of soggy breakfast cereal, published in the report entitled
'A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour
of Breakfast Cereal Flakes." [Published in the research journal
"Powder Technology," November, 1994, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 189-96.]

ECONOMICS Awarded jointly to Nick Leeson and his superiors at
Barings Bank and to Robert Citron of Orange County, California, for
using the calculus of derivatives to demonstrate that every
financial institution has its limits.

MEDICINE Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael
R. Boyle, for their invigorating study entitled "The Effects of
Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition." [Published in
"International Journal of Neuroscience," vol. 57, 1991, pp.
239-249.]

LITERATURE David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison
Wisconsin, for their deeply penetrating research report, "Rectal
foreign bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the
World's Literature." The citations include reports of, among other
items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a
wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven
different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a
jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and
one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of
spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.
[Published in the medical journal "Surgery," September 1986, pp.
512-519.]

PEACE The Taiwan National Parliament, for demonstrating that
politicians gain more by punching, kicking and gouging each other
than by waging war against other nations.

PSYCHOLOGY Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita, of
Keio University, for their success in training pigeons to
discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet.
[Their report, entitled "Pigeons' Discrimination of Paintings by
Monet and Picasso," was published in "Journal of the Experimental
Analysis of Behavior," vol. 63, 1995, pp. 165-174.]

PUBLIC HEALTH Martha Kold Bakkevig of Sintef Unimed in Trondheim,
Norway, and Ruth Nielson of the Technical University of Denmark, for
their exhaustive study, "Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory
Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold." [Published in
"Ergonomics," vol 37, no. 8, Aug. 1994 , pp. 1375- 89.]

DENTISTRY Robert H. Beaumont, of Shore View, Minnesota, for his
incisive study "Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental
Floss." [Published in the research journal "Journal of
Periodontology," vol. 61, no. 2, Feb. 1990, pp. 123-5.

CHEMISTRY Bijan Pakzad of Beverly Hills, for creating DNA Cologne
and DNA Perfume, neither of which contain deoxyribonucleic acid, and
both of which come in a triple helix bottle.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Vampire Protection

Authors
 Sandvik H. Baerheim A.

Institution
 Seksjon for allmennmedisin, Universitetet i Bergen.

Title
 "Does garlic protect against vampires? An experimental study"
 [Norwegian]

Original Title
 Beskytter hvitlok mot vampyrer? En eksperimentell studie.

Source
 Tidsskrift for Den Norske Laegeforening. 114(30):3583-6, 1994 Dec 10.

Abstract
--------
Vampires are feared everywhere, but the Balkan region has been
especially haunted. Garlic has been regarded as an effective
prophylactic against vampires. We wanted to explore this alleged
effect experimentally. Owing to the lack of vampires, we used
leeches instead. In strictly standardized research surroundings,
the leeches were to attach themselves to either a hand smeared with
garlic or to a clean hand. The garlic-smeared hand was preferred in
two out of three cases (95% confidence interval 50.4% to 80.4%).
When they preferred the garlic the leeches used only 14.9 seconds to
attach themselves, compared with 44.9 seconds when going to the
non-garlic hand (p < 0.05). The traditional belief that garlic has
prophylactic properties is probably wrong. The reverse may in fact
be true. This study indicates that garlic possibly attracts
vampires. Therefore to avoid a Balkan-like development in Norway,
restrictions on the use of garlic should be considered.

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