Ig-nore this post
If you haven’t seen yet, the 2005 Ig Nobel Prizes have been announced. Reading through the list of previous winners, I learned two things:
- For weeks, I’d been wondering why the shower curtains in my new apartment billow inwards. At first I thought it was because the hot water created a pressure difference, but then I found that cold water causes the same effect. Now I know why I couldn’t figure it out: the explanation is sufficiently nontrivial as to have earned an Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for its discoverer.
- Instead of futzing around with Recursive Fourier Sampling, I should’ve been working on more socially-relevant CS problems, like software that detects when a cat is walking across your keyboard.
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Comment #1 October 9th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
With reference to the IgNoble prizes:
wuth sadness, I must report that the idea of “clocky” the alarm clock that walks away, is not totally original.
In the 1930’s the Hungarian writer
Frigyes Karinthy published an essay in which he proposes “an alarm clock with mute” in which the alarm is muted, since alarm clocks are so stupid as to identify, on the basis of some superficial similarity, the two totally different people, viz. the one that set it up in the evening and the one who wants to sleep in the morning.
The prophetic essay also suggests the use of artificial calluses, consisting of small metal balls to be inserted in one’s shoe, next to the toes. (Perhaps it is needless to
point out the intellectual similarity to another IgNobel prizewinner, the dog nut replacement
gadget. I must emphasize that the Karinthy device is superior, as its use will result in the growth of organic calluses, while no such claim can be made for Neuticles.)