Wednesday June 5th it is Dead Duck Day again. At exactly 17:55h we will honour the mallard that is known to science as the first (documented) ‘victim’ of homosexual necrophilia in that species. Please join for this short open air ceremony next to the new wing of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, where the duck (now museum specimen NMR 9989-00232) has met his dramatic end. We will discuss (new) ways to prevent birds from colliding with glass (buildings) and the special Dead Duck Day Message of a prominent (duck) scientist will be read.
I failed to report about last years Dead Duck Day (the 17th), so to get you into the mood, here is what happened on June 5th 2012….[read the rest at Kees's blog]
BONUS: Kees’s TED Talk, “How a Dead Duck Changed My Life”:
Tomorrow Professor John Trinkaus — New York City’s most efficiently irritable man — will give his last lecture at the Zicklin School of Business, where he has taught for fifty years.
Professor Trinkaus was awarded the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for literature, for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about things that annoyed him (such as: What percentage of young people wear baseball caps with the peak facing to the rear rather than to the front; What percentage of pedestrians wear sport shoes that are white rather than some other color; What percentage of swimmers swim laps in the shallow end of a pool rather than the deep end; What percentage of automobile drivers almost, but not completely, come to a stop at one particular stop-sign; What percentage of commuters carry attaché cases; What percentage of shoppers exceed the number of items permitted in a supermarket’s express checkout lane; and What percentage of students dislike the taste of Brussels sprouts.)
86 of Professor Trinkaus’s publications are listed in “Trinkaus — An Informal Look,” Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 3, May/Jun 2003. The photo below shows Professor Trinkaus at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard, expressing his irritation:
“The Bear community exists as a subculture in reaction to the larger gay community. It rejects the normative idealized male beauty revered by mainstream gay men. While qualitative data document such self-identifiers as masculine-acting gay men who weigh more and have more body hair, there has to date been no quantitative analysis of this group’s characteristics. In response, we conducted two large-scale studies of gay men identifying as Bears (n = 469) to survey their self-reported physical, behavioral, and psychological traits. Our studies indicated that Bears were more likely to be hairier, heavier, and shorter than mainstream gay men…. [Our research] may explain how the Bear culture developed to ensure that even the heaviest, hairiest, and/or shortest individual can partner.”
(Thanks to investigator Neil Martin for bringing this to our attention.)
Researchers who study bears, rather than Bears, all take a back seat, one way or another, to Troy Hurtubise. Troy was awarded the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize for safety engineering, for developing, and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears. We have written about some of his subsequent adventures, too. Much of Troy’s original work is documented in the film “Project Grizzly“. This video shows a bit of that:
UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA
Tuesday, May 7, 6:30 pm, Geneva time. [TWITTER: #IgNobelGVA] Uni Dufour, Rue Général-Dufour 24.
Show en anglais, sans interprétation.
The University of Geneva show be hosted by Marc Abrahams. The show features genuine Ig Nobel Prize winners, who will explain, as best they can, what they did and why they did it:
The show is co-sponsored by CERN and the University of Geneva. [NOTE: Last week, Marc and Maria and Alice all took part in TEDxCERN. Now Stephan and Steffen and Bart and Kees are all joining them for this big event at U Geneva.]
TEDx CERN Facebook page posted a few photos from today’s event. Here are some of the Improbable people, with accompanying text from that Facebook page:
“It’s not usual to have bras thrown into the audience at CERN. Then again, Marc Abrahams is not your usual guy. Marc is the one behind the infamous Ig Nobel Awards and editor of Annals of Improbable Research focuses on research that makes you laugh, then think! You’re never going to look at science research quite the same after his talk.”
Maria Ferrante singing songs from Ig Nobel operas: ”Some crave coffee that steaming hot! More delightful music from Maria Ferrante!”
Pianist Alice Martelli accompanies Maria Ferrante:
Wednesday June 5th it is Dead Duck Day again. At exactly 17:55h we will honour the mallard that is known to science as the first (documented) ‘victim’ of homosexual necrophilia in that species. Please join for this short open air ceremony next to the new wing of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, where the duck (now museum specimen NMR 9989-00232) has met his dramatic end. We will discuss (new) ways to prevent birds from colliding with glass (buildings) and the special Dead Duck Day Message of a prominent (duck) scientist will be read.
