The annual IG Nobel 2006 awards are out. For those who don't know, the awards are given out annually by actual nobel prizewinners with much fanfair.
From Wiki
The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early autumn — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." Organized by the scientific humor journal Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University.
The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize Winners: ORNITHOLOGY: Ivan R. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Ivan Schwab
NUTRITION: Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University and Faten Al-Mussalam of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority, for showing that dung beetles are finicky eaters.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Faten Al-Musalam
PEACE: Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant -- a device that makes annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Howard Stapleton planned to attend, but his plans were interrupted by a family medical situation.
ACOUSTICS: D. Lynn Halpern (of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, and Brandeis University, and Northwestern University), Randolph Blake (of Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University) and James Hillenbrand (of Western Michigan University and Northwestern University) for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Lynn Halpern and Randolph Blake
MATHEMATICS: Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for calculating the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed
REFERENCE: "Blink-Free Photos, Guaranteed," Velocity, June 2006,
LITERATURE: Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University for his report "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly."
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Daniel Oppenheimer
MEDICINE: Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, for his medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"; and Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel, for their subsequent medical case report also titled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Francis Fesmire
PHYSICS: Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch
CHEMISTRY: Antonio Mulet, José Javier Benedito and José Bon of the University of Valencia, Spain, and Carmen Rosselló of the University of Illes Balears, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, for their study "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature."
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: The winners delivered their acceptance speech via video recording.
BIOLOGY: Bart Knols (of Wageningen Agricultural University, in Wageningen, the Netherlands; and of the National Institute for Medical Research, in Ifakara Centre, Tanzania, and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna Austria) and Ruurd de Jong (of Wageningen Agricultural University and of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Italy) for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Bart Knols
At the conclusion of the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, the winners gathered at center stage for a pointless photo opportunity.They were joined by the Nobel Laureates who had handed them the Ig Nobel. (The man in the beer bottle suit is William Lipscomb, who had a starring role in the mini-opera "The Count of Infinity.") Prizes, PHOTO: Kees Moeliker (2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner, who returned to give the keynote address in 2005).
Watch streaming archived video ->
http://improbable.com/ig/2006/webcast/stream.html
Some of the highlights:
Winners had one minute to deliver acceptance speeches, with the time limit strictly policed by an outspoken eight-year-old girl. Audience members bucked new security regulations intended to curb an IgNobel tradition: throwing paper aeroplanes. Over the course of the evening hundreds were hurled at the stage, where Harvard physicist Roy Glauber dutifully swept them up, as he has for the last 10 years.
i should have been there
Despite the gala's irreverent tone, the awards are taken increasingly seriously in the scientific community, with eight of the 10 winners this year paying their own way to attend the ceremony.
In his acceptance speech, Fesmire(the winner of medicine IG) recalled booking a trip to Stockholm upon first learning of the award -- only to realize later that he wasn't receiving a Nobel but rather an Ig. In his closing remarks, host Marc Abrahams sent recipients home with a backhanded compliment: "If you didn't win an Ig Nobel this year, and especially if you did, better luck next year." 
Btw the website of IgNobel foundation is absolutely fascinating
Improbable Research
And you thought nobel prize was dull 
