I was going to write about the recent spate of Amish-on-Amish violence resulting in some shoddily cut fringes and beards but on looking at the pictures i discovered that shoddily cut fringes and beards was the standard look anyway. Those zipper shunning Amish do make me smile though, easily my favourite bunch of crackpots.
Leaving the Amish to their hair cutting outbreak, the winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize, an award for useless discoveries, have been an announced and there has been a wide selection of bizarre recipients this year.
The prize for Chemistry was grabbed by the Japanese team who determined the exact amount of pungent horseradish needed to be pumped into a room of sleeping people to wake them while the Psychology winner is the University of Oslo for their steadfast work in why we sigh.
This years Physics winners are the group of European scientists who determined that discus throwers become dizzy because of the spinning they do which must have come as a shock to discus throwers everywhere.
The much sought after Physiology award went to the team who, after much patience, revealed that there is no evidence of yawning being contagious in the red-footed tortoise.
The Mathematics award was claimed by a whole group of people for predicting that the world would come to an end in 1954, 1982, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1997, 1999 and 2011 although to be fair the jury's still out on that last one.
The gold ribbon award is the Peace prize and this was claimed by the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running over them with a tank. Problem solved.
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