Those Wacky Heterosexuals

This Old News Is Still Wacky Het News

Monday, August 20th, 2007

Harvard University’s science-humor magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research, awarded its annual Ig Nobel Prizes on October 6, 2000 to winners in literature, physics, public health, and seven other categories. We’ll be following these more closely in the future, but we couldn’t leave these out. The awards, which spoof the Nobel Prizes, celebrate achievements that “cannot or should not be reproduced.” Genuine Nobel laureates participate in the ceremony, which also feature the annual “Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate” contest.

The 2000 Winners:
• David Dunning, of Cornell University, and Justin Kruger, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, received the psychology award for their report “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”
• Jasmuheen (formerly known as Ellen Greve), of Brisbane, Australia, received the literature award for her book Living on Light (Koha Publishing, 1998), which explains that although some people do eat food, they don’t ever really need to.
• Richard Wassersug, of Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, received the biology award for his report “On the Comparative Palatability of Some Dry-Season Tadpoles From Costa Rica.”