Spoof awards honor offbeat research

A man who cracked his knuckles every day for 60 years and a team who made a convertible bra/gas mask have won Nobel prizes.

Scratch that. They’ve won Ig Nobel prizes.

The real prizes established by Alfred Nobel’s will are to be presented over the next couple of weeks. However, as has now been traditional for 18 years, the magazine Annals of Improbable Research has just announced its spoof versions.

While the prizes for economics (Iceland’s banks and finance chiefs) and mathematics (Zimbabwe’s bank chief who has printed 100 trillion dollars bank notes) are pure spoofery, the science-related prizes go to researchers who have carried out genuine studies which produced measurable results, but where those findings “cannot, or should not, be reproduced.” This year the scientific winners include:

  • Biology: The discovery that bacteria from giant panda feces can reduce the mass of kitchen waste by 90%
  • Chemistry: A team which found a way to make thin films of diamonds from the carbon in tequila.
  • Medicine: Something of a lifetime achievement award to a man who, in 1998, revealed that he had cracked the knuckles on his left hand twice a day for 60 years, but not on the right hand. He reported that he had not developed arthritis, contrary to his mother’s warnings.
  • Physics: A team which investigated how female vertebrae have developed to cope with pregnancy, and specifically why pregnant women don’t tip over.
  • Public health: A patent application for a bra which could quickly be converted into two facemasks in the event of an emergency.

Meanwhile the peace prize went to a team of scientists who researched whether it is more dangerous to be hit on the head with a full or empty beer bottle (it turns out that either way, you’re probably getting your skull cracked.)

Full details of the award winners and previous recipients are at: http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2009


UFOs and the argument from ignorance

In the following video, American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gets asked if he believes in UFOs. As usual, the answer he provides is both hilarious and enlightening.

The argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam (“appeal to ignorance”), argument by lack of imagination, or negative evidence, is a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false, or is false only because it has not been proven true.

The argument from personal incredulity, also known as argument from personal belief or argument from personal conviction, refers to an assertion that because one personally finds a premise unlikely or unbelievable, the premise can be assumed to be false, or alternatively that another preferred but unproven premise is true instead.

Both arguments commonly share this structure: a person regards the lack of evidence for one view as constituting proof that another view is true. The types of fallacies discussed in this article should not be confused with the reductio ad absurdum method of argument, in which a valid logical contradiction of the form “A and not A” is used to disprove a premise. (Source: Wikipedia)

Google Wave goes beta (plus three invites up for grabs!)

By Natania Barron
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I was a bit miffed when my husband got his Google Wave invite before me; I mean, seriously. I showed it to him in the first place. Still, I’ve been insanely curious since learning about the new product–developed by the makers of GoogleMaps, by the way–since I first watched the introductory video months ago. Right away I saw the value in the application. It seems really smart, from my perspective anyway, to integrate the components of GMail that I use most: email and chat–and do it in a much more content-rich manner.

From the Official Google Blog:

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication.

Ten hours after my husband invited me, I got my notification and giddily clicked the link. And, yes. Well. The biggest problem with Wave is that it’s dependent on lots and lots of users and friends. It’s collaboration-minded, and that’s awesome. But when you first start it up and just see two people on your “wave” it’s definitely makes you feel a bit lonely. Okay, really lonely.

Sure, time will bring more connections. But the lag is a bit frustrating. With a whopping three contacts right now it’s not exactly bristling with energy over there. I’m surprised that Google didn’t opt for a quicker contact system, or integrated it with current Gmail contacts (or at least retained email addresses to make inviting easier).

All in all, I can certainly see how Google Wave is going to rock my communication world. I mean, I’m a collaborator. I have writing groups, activism groups, friend groups, family groups, blogging groups, geeky groups… Organization is always an issue with me, and even through copious Gmail labels and filters, I still feel overwhelmed. Not to mention that with my excessively short attention span (and love of tools like Twitter) the opportunity to communicate in one place is really exciting.

But the jury’s not out yet. Until I have proper time to tinker, and more contacts to actually make the wave make sense, I’ll have to hold off on a more formal review.

However, in the spirit of altruism, I still have three (3) remaining Google Wave invites. If you’d like one, just leave a comment. We’ll select randomly from the best answers and post the winners this evening!

Edit: Our winners have been selected, and invites have been sent. You should get confirmation within the next day or so (as mentioned, my invite took 10 hours to make it to my inbox!).

Congratulations to infostud (who made me lol with his typo), to protocollie for the most creative response, and to Brian for the poetic turn (I can always appreciate some good haiku!)

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EA case judge paints unpretty picture for Jim Brown

Next time somebody condemns your favourite video game as crude entertainment, you can now legally argue it is in fact a work of art.

That’s the argument used by a Los Angeles judge who rejected a lawsuit filed by NFL legend Jim Brown (pictured) against Electronic Arts. Brown had argued that EA had breached his intellectual property rights by including his likeness in the Madden series.

While the game didn’t name Brown, it did include a player who physically resembled him in a team of all-time Cleveland Brown greats. As well as the the visual reference, the player (who isn’t named) has historical statistics remarkably similar to those of Jim Brown.

However, the judge dismissed the case, ruling that the use of Brown’s image was an example of “expressive works, akin to an expressive painting that depicts celebrity athletes of past and present in a realistic sporting environment.” Such works are protected in the US by the First Amendment.

The ruling, which could still be appealed, doesn’t appear to have put Brown off his campaign on the issue. He’s applied to add his input to a separate legal case led by Sam Keller, a former football player for Nebraska University who is suing both EA and the NCAA over their inclusion of player images in college-based games. In that case, too, the players are not named but are otherwise identifiable.

EA’s defense in the case is based on the logic that all the details they use, such as a player’s physical appearance, jersey number and career stats, are matters of public record. They say visual likeness restrictions should only apply in areas such as advertising.

The nature of the two cases means that the judge in the Keller case is under no burden to take into account the Brown ruling, even if she allows him to join the Keller case.

Earlier this year, the NFL Player’s Association, which represents retired players, agreed to pay $24 million in compensation over claims that it deliberately worked with EA to allow the firm to avoid paying royalties to players featured in ‘historic’ modes.

How Microsoft is Making Money out of Piracy

In the following video, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, explains how Microsoft is turning piracy into money by letting people in under-developed countries use their software for “free”. Later, when these countries start to prosper, the users, who are now hooked on Microsoft’s technologies, will apparently pay for the products gladly.