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Ig Nobel Awards 2003 184

Posted by michael from the she-blinded-me-with-science dept.
prostoalex writes "The Ig Nobel awards for 2003 were presented at Harvard University. Hold your breath for the winners of this year's awards from Annals of Improbable Research. Engineering: the inventors of the Murphy's law. Physics: authors of 'An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces' report. Medicine: the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents. Psychology: authors of the 'Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities' report. Chemistry: a Japanese scientist who studied a bronze statue strangely ignored by pigeon population. Literature: the author of more than 80 scientific reports on amusing statistical information. Economics: the man, who viewed the entire country of Liechtenstein as a large convention center. Interdisciplinary: authors of 'Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans' study. Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above."
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Ig Nobel Awards 2003 More

Ig Nobel Awards 2003

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  • I knew it. (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:15AM (#7124119) Homepage Journal

    Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species

    I always was suspicious of those damn mallards.. Their "Oh, I'm just an innocent duck" quacks and what not..
  • I'm all about the Taxi drivers one.

  • I buy it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@ColinGregor y P a lmer.net> on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:19AM (#7124160) Homepage
    the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents

    Makes sense to me. They charge a small fortune to go a small distance, and we still pay it. : )

    • Re:I buy it. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:38AM (#7124364)
      Then they tell ya about their 20 years service in the SAS and how they think they should have jumped on Yemen back in 1976 but at the last moment they got called back by MI6 with whom the cabby himself has "very good standing".

      One stopped his cab in from of my house and talked to me about his revision of JFK and what he thinks were the reasons behind his assassination.

      Lemme tell you this, London cabbies are too smart for their own good. They know more about secret operations, international deals and about subterranean civilisations controlling us thru psychic waves than the entire MOD does.

      And whatever they say... don't reply back.

    • Pictures (Score:3, Informative)

      by henrygb ( 668225 )
      While the ducks get /.ed or worse, here are some pictures of a taxi driver's brain [pnas.org] and even the original article [pnas.org].

      The study was biased as women (and left-handed men) were left out. Similar to the ducks.

      • The study was biased as women (and left-handed men) were left out. Similar to the ducks.

        Women and left handed men were left out of the duck study? I'm going to write to my MP.

  • Market study (Score:3, Insightful)

    by javatips ( 66293 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:22AM (#7124188) Homepage
    LITERATURE
    John Trinkaus, of the Zicklin School of Business, New York City, for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about specific annoyances and anomalies of daily life, 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 attache 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.


    That's what marketing people do when they do a market study!

  • Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans (Score:3, Funny)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@ColinGregor y P a lmer.net> on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:22AM (#7124189) Homepage
    That's so unfair. Beautiful people have an advantage in everything.
  • That was less of a "who wants to know?" study than a "Surely that has been proved already?" study...

    And what's wrong with studying statues that pigeons ignore? I want /clothes/ made of that stuff dammit (and a car)! That's damn useful...

  • best one (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ih8apple ( 607271 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:22AM (#7124192)
    PEACE
    Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for a triple accomplishment: First, for leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; Second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and Third, for creating the Association of Dead People.
    • Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for a triple accomplishment: First, for leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; Second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and Third, for creating the Association of Dead People.

      It's the Indian version of Reg Shoe!

  • Slashdot-proof copy of article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:22AM (#7124193)
    The 2003 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
    The 2003 Ig Nobel Prize winners were announced on Thursday evening, October 2, at the 13th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre. The ceremony was telecast live on the Internet. (The winners will give free public talks on Saturday, October 4, at the Ig Informal Lectures, at MIT room 54-100.)
    Click here for details.

    ENGINEERING
    The late John Paul Stapp, the late Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols, for jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law, the basic engineering principle that "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it" (or, in other words: "If anything can go wrong, it will").
    REFERENCE: "The Fastest Man on Earth," Nick T. Spark, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 5, Sept/Oct 2003.]
    WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: (1) Author Nick T. Spark , on behalf of John Paul Stapp's widow, Lilly. (2) Edward Murphy's Edward A. Murphy III, on behalf of his late father. (3) George Nichols, via audio tape.

    PHYSICS
    Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams of Australia, for their irresistible report "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces."
    [PUBLISHED IN: Applied Ergonomics, vol. 33, no. 6, November 2002, pp. 523-31. A copy is available at http://www.culvenor.com/]
    WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: John Culvenor.

    MEDICINE
    Eleanor Maguire, David Gadian, Ingrid Johnsrude, Catriona Good, John Ashburner, Richard Frackowiak, and Christopher Frith of University College London, for presenting evidence that the brains of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.
    [PUBLISHED IN: "Navigation-Related Structural Change In the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 8, April 11, 2000, pp. 4398-403. Also see their subsequent publications.]
    WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Eleanor Maguire.

    PSYCHOLOGY
    Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli of the University of Rome, and Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, for their discerning report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities."
    [PUBLISHED IN: Nature, vol. 385, February 1997, p. 493.]
    WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Philip Zimbardo.

    CHEMISTRY
    Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University, for his chemical investigation of a bronze statue, in the city of Kanazawa, that fails to attract pigeons.
    WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Yukio Hirose.

    LITERATURE
    John Trinkaus, of the Zicklin School of Business, New York City, for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about specific annoyances and anomalies of daily life, 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 attache 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.
    REFERENCE: 86 of Professor Trinkaus's publications are listed in "Trinkaus -- An Informal Look," Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 3, May/Jun 2003.
    WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: John Trinkaus.

    ECONOMICS
    Karl Schwarzler and the nation of Liechtenstein, for making it possible to rent the entire country for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings.
    REFERENCE: and
    WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Karl Schwarzler.

    INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
    Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist

  • That's the Internet for you (Score:5, Funny)

    by wirde ( 653827 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:22AM (#7124195)
    Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species.

    Believe it or not, they actually have pictures of the act as well. That's the Internet for you, nothing but pr0n.

  • The Knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:22AM (#7124196)
    ...the scientists, who discovered that London taxi drivers are smarter than average London residents

    I think memorizing every single street in the city of London does make you pretty darn smart.

    Though, London cabbies are certainly not short on opinions. Maybe memorizing every street also makes one think they know everything about anything.

    • Re:The Knowledge (Score:5, Funny)

      by tiled_rainbows ( 686195 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:37AM (#7124348) Homepage Journal
      The scary thing about this that most london cabbies seem to be bigoted, racist, sexist, quasi-fascist, foaming-at-the-mouth right-wingers.

      I always thought it was just due to the buildup of misanthropic rage from the job they do, but this research raises the disturbing possibility is that maybe their opinions only seem offensive to me because I'm not smart enough to understand them, and that they're actually right.

      Genuine quote from when I took a cab last winter:

      Me: Cold out tonight, eh?

      Cabbie: Yeah. Still, if it kills off a few of these homeless people it's not a bad thing, eh?
      • Have you considered the possibility that they're trolling?
      • You're sure that's London you mean and not Toronto, eh?

      • Yeah. Still, if it kills off a few of these homeless people it's not a bad thing, eh?

        That's the difference between a London cabbie and a New Yorker cabbie. The London cabbie will comment on the danger of the weather. The New Yorker will just say "screw the weather" and take the homeless removal into his own hands.

        See, being civil is so much more advanced than not.

    • I would suspect London's cabbies have better spatial imagination, since you'd probably need that to plot out a route in your head, even if you do know every street in London.

      This, of course, is not the same thing as being "smart," although it might score you higher on IQ tests.
    • neurons among the individuals deciding on what projects to award that prize. They were probably jealous when the study got air time on PBS. It also explains why some people are perpetually lost, possibly even some of the awards committee.

      I can just imagine the real decision discussion. "They funded that 'who cares' investigation on spatial learning and its effects on neurological development, and they used London cabbies of all things for subjects. But they wouldn't even glance at my proposal to inve

  • Juxtaposition (Score:2, Funny)

    by mopslik ( 688435 )

    Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.

    Maybe not quite the juxtaposition that was intended.

  • "Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species."

    Mallards! Dirty dirty mallards!

    Sean: Whats the difference between a mallard with a cold and your mother?
    Alex: I dont know
    Sean: One is a sick duck...I dont remember the rest but your mother is a whore.

    (apparently they are BOTH sick f@#$s

  • Dead man walking (Score:5, Funny)

    by Brahmastra ( 685988 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:23AM (#7124204)
    Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for a triple accomplishment: First, for leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; Second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and Third, for creating the Association of Dead People.

    Wonder if he can refuse to pay bills, citing death as the reason.
    • Who the hell modded this informative? It's funny! Mod this one up, it got a chuckle outta me.
    • Brings a whole new meaning to the term 'identity theft'. :-D

      But seriously, the only bills he can possibly escape are his utility bills; he obviously has to pay his monthly grocery bills to the shopkeeper. It'll be interesting if he's one of them tax-paying ones though; as many people know, less than 1% of all adult Indians actually pay (or are required to pay) taxes.

    • Re:Dead man walking (Score:5, Informative)

      by enjo13 ( 444114 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @12:34PM (#7124926) Homepage
      He actually tried that and more:)

      In an effort to prove that he was alive (it took something like 15 years) he did all sorts of funny things, like demanding a widow pension for his wife, invading government gatherings (to get arrested), racking up an insane number of contempt of court charges, etc...

      All under that same principle.. he wanted to force the government to recognize his existence by forcing them to do things that you can only do to a live person.
    • I'm sure he's just spending the year dead for tax reasons.

      --grendel drago
    • Wonder if he can refuse to pay bills, citing death as the reason.

      I wonder if he's just doing this for a year for tax purposes.
    • Whenever I get (dead-tree) junk mail that somehow slips through the filters, I take a fat red felt tip pen and write

      ____DECEASED____
      Return to sender

      in large block letters all over the front. Works rather efficiently.
  • Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.

    " WERE linked above" that should read...

  • AHA! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by abb3w ( 696381 )
    I always knew that taxi drivers were freakish mutants, but now there's PROOF!!!
  • Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.

    And just why did you think we'd like to see actual pictures of said necrophilia?
    • Well, it's 11:26 in the morning, and you're posting on Slashdot. You obviously have nothing better to do with your time :)

      (I, however, am merely skipping class :))

  • touching (Score:1, Funny)

    by 3ryon ( 415000 )
    Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site...

    Great! Now, when people say the internet is too foul I can just point them to a love story about two fowls.

  • Sheep? (Score:5, Funny)

    by PsychoKiller ( 20824 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:28AM (#7124252) Homepage
    'An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces'

    Let me guess, these were Scottish researchers, right?

  • Well... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@ColinGregor y P a lmer.net> on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:28AM (#7124255) Homepage
    We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students). This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations.

    I think you need to see if people prefer beautiful chickens before you can jump to that conclusion.
    • I think you need to see if people prefer beautiful chickens before you can jump to that conclusion.

      No, that's not what the researcher is saying. The research is this: There are two opposing views.

      1) Human sexual/aesthetic preferences for other humans arise from biological grounds.
      2) These sexual/aesthetic preferences arise from social norms and a lifetime of training.

      This research assumes that if chickens prefer "attractive" human faces, for which they have no social training, this must necessarily

  • This article reads like a Slashback post on April 1st... I know I looked twice at my calendar when I read it. Twice this week, I've forgotten what day of the week it was - so maybe I'm more delusional that I thought.
    -N

  • Minivan driving soccer moms... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MadAnthony02 ( 626886 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:32AM (#7124305)

    Hey, I consider it useful that Trinkaus discovered that woman in vans don't stop for stopsigns. I've never liked those minivan driving soccer moms.

    Observations were made at the same 4 T-junction intersections in a residential community in the suburbs of a large northeastern city. Two characteristics were selected for viewing: type of vehicle and sex of driver. Data for 8 90-min observations suggest an overall compliance rate of about 6% with stop signs in a residential community. Women driving vans were the least compliant--approximately 1%.

    Link [improbable.com]

  • Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species.

    So much for sex being the most natural thing in the world. That sounds like a definition of "unnatural practices".
  • Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.
    worst choice of words... EVER!
    more! more! more!
  • Trinkaus -- An Informal Look (Part 8 of 10)
    The guy who won literature prize is quite interesting. Check this out
    (71) "The Demise of 'Yes': An Informal Look," J. Trinkaus, Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 84, no. 3, part 1, June 1997, p. 866. For affirmative responses to simple interrogatories, the use of "absolutely" and "exactly" may be becoming more socially frequent than "yes." A counting of positive replies to 419 questions on several TV networks showed 249 answers of "absolutely," 117 "exactly,"

    • Re:The Demise of 'Yes' (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rde ( 17364 ) *
      AIR devoted a significant chunk of an issue to Trinkaus a while ago, and as I started the article, I sniggered. After a page or so, I was tittering with him, not at him. By the end, I was awestruck This guy is great. He's spent years doing exactly what the rest of us do, only he's been counting and writing at the same time. The guy is a true scientist, and one that's shown us that yes, the world is indeed slowly but surely going to hell in a handbasket. Most people say 'people used to stop at those stop sig
  • Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species

    and think "Oh great, a whole new series of trolls.

  • SCO missing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:38AM (#7124355) Journal
    I'm suprised that SCO's McBride isn't on this list somewhere, for his spectacular achievement in Chemistry: Turning bullshit into gold.
  • The thing I found amazing was that people actually showed up to accept their award! Never mind getting a grant to do research on necro-homo-mallards, or sheep dragging - that takes chutzpah!

  • recursive report (Score:3, Funny)

    by product byproduct ( 628318 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:39AM (#7124379)
    Literature: the author of more than 80 scientific reports on amusing statistical information.

    80 reports? That should be enough to write an 81st scientific report on amusing statistical information about these 80 reports.
  • Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available from the official Web site, linked above.

    Just in case there are any human necrophiliacs with a case of the 'featheries'.

  • Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:41AM (#7124394) Journal
    ...looking at how people go to great lengths to discourage pigeons from soiling public art and other objects, the pigeon-thwarting bronze statue actually has practical application. Sounds better than those rotating "antennas" they put on the top of some billboards.

    I'd like to see the result if the site wasn;t /.ed.

  • "Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species."

    ...not that there's anything wrong with that!

  • Let me be the first to say... (Score:4, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) * <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:49AM (#7124481) Journal
    The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae) (page 243-247)

    On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass facade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an 'Attempted Rape Flight' that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.

    75 MINUTES! Talk about not knowing when to quit! Not even a, "Honey, are you awake?"... sheeesh.

    BTW, the pictures of the ducks are quite tasteful, while the beautiful chicken photos border on hard-core pornography.

  • more Nobel than Ig (Score:5, Informative)

    by barakn ( 641218 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @11:58AM (#7124557)
    I'm not certain why the London Taxi Driver study received an Ig Nobel. It was a beautifully done study. For those who don't know, people who want to be black cab taxi drivers in London take a 3 year course (3/4 drop out) to pass an exam. They have to memorize essentially every street in a 6 mile radius (street names sometimes change block by block) and significant landmarks along those streets. All this information they refer to simply as "the knowledge." It was shown that the hippocampi of these taxi drivers are larger than normal and are larger in drivers who have been driving longer. This study helped change medical opinion on the 'plasticity' of the adult brain and has important implications for brain damage and diseases like Parkinson's.

    It'a an active field of reasearch. A similar study found that the hippocampus of the chickadee increases by 30% in the fall when it needs to memorize the locations of all the food stores it is busily hiding,

    • Amazingly, not one of those taxidrivers is an avian necrophile. Those Brits sure know quality taxi service.
    • > I'm not certain why the London Taxi Driver study received an Ig Nobel. It was a beautifully done study.

      Read the organization's explanation of the qualifications for the prize.

      Their criteria is "cannot or should not be repeated." They go to some lengths to explain that they don't mean "bad research."
      • Their criteria is "cannot or should not be repeated." They go to some lengths to explain that they don't mean "bad research."

        But it should be repeated. The young cab drivers should have the measurements repeated periodically to see if individual hippocampi can be caught in the act of growing.

  • Slow to load (slashdot effect) and I SO wanted to read about the homosexual necrophiliac mallard duck...
  • What an I missing?

    CHEMISTRY Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University, for his chemical investigation of a bronze statue, in the city of Kanazawa, that fails to attract pigeons. WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Yukio Hirose.

    Isn't this precisely the way Penicillin [wikipedia.org]was discovered by Fleming.

  • Had to say it. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I, for one, welcome our new homosexual necrophiliac Mallard duck overlords.
  • "Homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species." WhoTF came up with the idea to study this?
  • Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species.

    Pfft - too bad I hold the record for first documented case of homosexual necrophilia with the mallard duck species.

  • Really Quacked Me Up (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ChaoticCoyote ( 195677 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @01:59PM (#7125910) Homepage

    Having a platonic fondness for ducks, I was intrigued by Dr. Moeliker's report. Reading the paper [www.nmr.nl] left me pondering the nature of a universe in which:

    • A scientist spends 75 minutes watching one dead animal rape another's corpse.
    • Said scientist collects and dissects the deceased victim, producing a six-page report (with citations!)
    • I actually read this report when I really should be doing something else with my time.

    Perhaps Dr. Moeliker's work stands as a monument to the curiosity of the human mind, and the need to laugh even as we ponder insane questions. At least he didn't duck the issues...

  • Spam Alert! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Thumb-One ( 653376 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @02:03PM (#7125950)

    homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species. Links and pictures are available...

    I got spam with that same line in the header yesterday.


    ...and no, the links didn't work.

  • PSYCHOLOGY: Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli of the University of Rome, and Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, for their discerning report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities." [PUBLISHED IN: Nature, vol. 385, February 1997, p. 493.]
    WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Philip Zimbardo.

    Philip Zimbardo made an earlier contribution to ignoble research with his notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment [prisonexp.org]. From the page: "Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of pris

  • My favorite Swiftie (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ellen Spertus ( 31819 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @04:40PM (#7127658) Homepage

    > Biology: first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck species.

    "I am not a homosexual necrophiliac!" said Tom in dead earnest.

  • Interesting that 90% of the replies to this story are about necrophilic ducks. Says something about the /. population that they find it *htat* interesting.

    What I really want to see are the test films from J. Stapp's rocket sled rides.

  • The Pigeons (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ChrisMaple ( 607946 )
    I found the pigeon story:

    Sure enough, in addition to copper, lead and tin, the statue was found to contain gallium -- not enough gallium to be dangerously toxic, as it turned out, but enough to repel birds. This has led Hirose to work on experiments to develop a metal that will keep birds away from bronze statues for good.

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