Net Gains: A Nobel approach

www.eecs.harvard.edu/ ig_nobel/

Congratulations to the Prime Minster of Pakistan, Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, and his Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for jointly scooping this year's IgNobel Peace Prize. The prize was awarded in recognition of their contribution to the Asian nuclear arms race. The IgNobel prizes are the self styled alter-ego of the Nobel Prize, and are handed out to academics, professionals and statesmen who have done the most useless work in their chosen fields. The prize, which is organised and administrated by Harvard University, is now something of an institution in itself. Other awards this year included the biology prize to Peter Fong of Gettysburg College for "contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac" and the safety engineering award for "developing and testing a suit of armour that is impervious to grizzly bears". The award website contains all this year's winners, an archive of previous winners and a list of related sites.