As most science blogs are a-bustle discussing this years Nobel prize “winners” (very odd, term, that), I thought I’d take a look at the Ig Nobels instead. Unfortunately I must say that this year’s crop wasn’t nearly as good as last year’s.

The Ig Nobel prize is awarded research that makes you “LAUGH and then THINK”. Highlights from previous years includes:

2005, Peace: “Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University, in the U.K., for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie “Star Wars.”"

Awesome. If I were to become an experimental biologist, this sort of stuff is totally what I’d get up to.

2006, Biology: “Bart Knols (of Wageningen Agricultural University, in Wageningen, the Netherlands; and of the National Institute for Medical Research, in Ifakara Centre, Tanzania, and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna Austria) and Ruurd de Jong (of Wageningen Agricultural University and of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Italy) for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet.”

To be fair - is anyone really surprised?

2007, Linguistics: “Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.”

Almost too bizarre for comment. I love it.

This is all funny stuff, right? So what do we get this year? Well, the biology prize is pretty giggle-worthy: Dog fleas jump higher than cat fleas. Ehehe. But the Cognitive Science Prize? Awarded to the people who discovered that slime molds can solve puzzles! The idea that this is OMG TEH LULZ baffles me. I simply thought it was really freaking cool.

Maybe this is why the other kids wouldn’t play with me. Sniffle.

science, ig nobel

After rhetorics class today, I was discussing voice pitch with some classmates. It’s generally a good idea to assume a deep voice when speaking in front of an audience, to avoid sounding hysterical and give your subject matter some gravity. Of course, women are often at a bit of a disadvantage, seeing as how many of us don’t have very deep voices. In a desperate bid to be heard, it’s easy to start straining your voice and/or screaming - even if you have a microphone. (For the record, I’m an alto and don’t really have this problem.)

That this is a very real disadvantage has been made clear by american politics, where one of the main arguments against Hillary Clinton’s candidacy seemed to be that she has a shrill voice. And now, liberal bloggers who were pissed off by this unfair treatment of a female candidate are doing the very same thing against Sarah Palin. (Myers, I’m looking at you…) Just google ‘Palin “I hate her voice”‘, see what I mean.

Ok, so her voice is not very nice to listen to. But surely, she can’t help it? Sometimes no matter how much you train your voice, you simply can’t make it sound any better in front of an audience. Sure, she could do something about that accent, but … huh, wait a minute.

In the older clips she actually sounds like she has half a brain! The Salon piece covering this talks about her accent, but listen to her voice. It’s relaxed, soft, feminine and not shrill at all. She’s actually making an effort to sound awful.

Gosh darnit. There goes my argument.

sarah palin, rhetorics