Comments on: Joshing, spoofing and damage

By: walt

walt — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:36:47 +0000

Wow, Glenda: I’m honored.

And, you know, I would never have known about your paper otherwise.

At one point, my coauthor and I considered “And Not Or” as the title for the book “Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality.” Saner heads prevailed–no problem with initial articles, but online catalogs would have had, um, difficulties with that title.

By: Glenda Browne

Glenda Browne — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:13:21 +0000

Hello Walt, and thank you for your post. You are absolutely correct that most of the Ig Nobel winners think that winning an Ig Nobel is just about the best thing that could happen to them. The Ig Nobel committee also thinks the same, although they do let you know privately in case you wish to refuse. Just in case other people take it less positively, I have been considering whispering the Ig and emphasising the ‘Nobel Prize’ bit, but I doubt I’d get away with it.

Hello G. Williams. I think The The is a great example, and it is in my 2001 paper, and was one of the questions asked by the audience at the MIT speeches.

Glenda Browne, 2007 Ig Nobel Literature Laureate.

By: G. Williams

G. Williams — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:25:35 +0000

I haven’t read Browne’s paper yet, but I immediately thought of a most bedeviling example: the band The The, which caused a great deal of consternation when I was working at Amazon.com preparing to launch the music retail site, back in 1998.

I think we eventually dealt with it by treating the entire string–both words and the space between them–as a single unit, but I don’t quite recall because it’s been almost 10 years.

By: walt

walt — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:42:46 +0000

T. Scott: It makes excellent sense that the prima donnas would be those who knew they were second-raters. Way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I had one survey course at UC Berkeley brilliantly taught by a Nobel laureate (as have tens of thousands of Berkeley students, by quite a few laureates). That professor did not seem to think he was above humor or better than the rest of us.

By: T Scott

T Scott — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:28:14 +0000

I’ve been a fan of the Ig Nobels for many years and always look forward eagerly to the new awards. They bring a wonderful leaven of humor to what is, of course, the very serious business of science and knowledge discovery. I’ve had the privilege of working among some very brilliant scientists over the course of my career and I have noted that the most tight-assed, humorless, (and most likely to berate circulation staff at the slightest inconvenience) are the prima donnas who know, deep down, that they’re never going to truly attain the first rank. The really brilliant men and women of science? To a person, I’ve found them to be kind, never losing their childlike sense of wonder at the universe, and having a fantastic sense of humor. Are they also demanding, driven, eccentric, wacko? Of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

By: walt

walt — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:03:33 +0000

I remember the Kansas article, which also revealed quite a bit about how un-flat a pancake actually is. And it sure does seem to me that most Ig Nobel recipients understand and appreciate the nature of the awards.

But people’s ability to misinterpret continues strong, and probably always will. That happens in liblogs too, of course: I’ve had it happen to me, and have been guilty of it as well. And I’m sure there are researchers who are so deadly serious about everything they do that they’d be shocked and appalled to be nominated for an Ig Nobel. I’d bet that Glenda Browne is not one of them!

By: Jerry Stephens

Jerry Stephens — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:54:04 +0000

I think your assessment of the Ig Nobel awards is correct. Most nominees and recipients of the awards seem to understand their tongue-in-cheek nature. One nomination a couple of years ago was for geographical research that proved that Kansas is, indeed, flatter than a pancake. The research was done in an apparently reasonable and justifiable fashion. And really prove that Kansas is flatter than a pancake. I was amused, as a native Kansan, to have proven scientifically just what we always understood: Kansas is flat.