杏吧原创

THE PRIZES that Feedback and the scientific establishment await each year
with awe were handed out last week at Harvard University鈥攖he Ig Nobel
Prizes, which reward dubious achievements that 鈥渃annot or should not be
reproduced鈥� in fields from peace to safety engineering.

This year鈥檚 festivities, sponsored by Annals of Improbable Research,
highlighted the changing nature of laboratory infrastructure by celebrating
鈥淒uck Tape, the substance that holds the world together鈥�. Veterans of the labs
of yore, however, will miss string and sealing wax, the mainstays of so many
experiments in the past.

The Ig Nobel in the long-neglected field of safety engineering went to
Troy Hurtubise of North Bay, Ontario, 鈥渇or developing and personally testing鈥� a
high-tech suit of armour for use while studying grizzly bears in the wild. The
success of the suit was documented in the film Project Grizzly, and was
confirmed by Hurtubise鈥檚 live appearance as a keynote speaker at the Ig Nobel
ceremony.

Chicago physicist Richard Seed received the economics prize 鈥渇or his efforts
to stoke up the world economy by cloning human beings鈥�, starting with himself.
The citation tastefully made no mention of the effect of nominative determinism
in his choice of this latest venture.

Peter Fong of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania received the biology prize
for giving new meaning to the old American clich茅 鈥渉appy as a clam鈥� by
dosing clams with Prozac. Peter Kramer, author of the bestseller Listening
to Prozac, accepted the prize on behalf of Fong. Jeffrey Woodman, whose
restaurant Woodman鈥檚 in Essex, Massachusetts, invented the fried clam, added a
special tribute.

Satirist Tom Lehrer long ago retired from singing songs to spend more time
sampling the esoteric delights of academic mathematics, but a line from his
1960s song Proliferation鈥攁bout the Bomb鈥攅choed in
Feedback鈥檚 mind on hearing who had won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize. 鈥淛ust to use on
you-know-who鈥� may also have echoed in the minds of Indian prime minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who were honoured
鈥渇or their aggressively peaceful explosions of atomic bombs鈥�.

A familiar name returned to the Ig laureate list this year, French scientist
Jacques Benveniste, famed for publishing a report in Nature suggesting
that water retains a 鈥渕emory鈥� of molecules it once contained. This year he
received the chemistry prize for discovering that 鈥渘ot only does water have
memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines鈥�. Given
the struggle some days to transmit any information at all over telephone lines,
Feedback was impressed.

Among other prizes awarded was that for science education, which went to New
Age guru Dolores Krieger, a professor emeritus at New York University. Krieger
developed the theory of therapeutic touch, in which 鈥渘urses manipulate the
energy fields of ailing patients by carefully avoiding physical contact with
those patients鈥�. This theory鈥檚 contribution to educating the next generation of
scientists was demonstrated when Krieger鈥檚 prize was accepted by 11-year-old
Emily Rosa. Her experiments testing the theory for a school science project led
to a paper debunking it in The Journal of the American Medical
Association.

HAS Colgate-Palmolive discovered a cheap way of generating molecular oxygen?
Is its toothpaste going to solve the world鈥檚 energy problems?

The company鈥檚 Sensation Deep Clean toothpaste contains bicarbonate of soda.
This, the advertisements assure us, is a special ingredient that releases tiny
bubbles of oxygen which swirl around our teeth as we brush.

Exciting news, if only it were true. Sadly, it isn鈥檛. When bicarbonate of
soda is dissolved in water it releases carbon dioxide, a gas which the world
already has more than enough of.

Perhaps Colgate-Palmolive鈥檚 advertising agency didn鈥檛 think CO₂ was
glamorous enough for its toothpaste. Or perhaps the copywriters need to learn a
little more basic chemistry.

IF YOU are thinking of shipping goods around the globe as the millennium
dawns, the best country to do business with could be Thailand.

Over the past decade, the world鈥檚 maritime industry has taken great strides
in automating and computerising both navigation at sea and loading and unloading
ships in harbour. But according to a usually reliable Internet news service, a
US Coast Guard survey has found that one fifth of all embedded chips in key
marine equipment are not millennium-compliant.

If the problems are not dealt with in time, the consequences could range from
ships colliding to port refrigeration systems shutting down on 31 December
1999.

But Thailand, the report says, expects to avoid these sorts of difficulties.
It hasn鈥檛 computerised its ports yet.

BEFORE going into election mode, John Howard鈥檚 government in Australia
introduced into Parliament the Environment Protection and Biodiversity
Conservation Bill 1998.

Weighing in at a massive 432 pages, this attempt to take Australia onto the
environmental high ground includes 18 pages of definitions. And very helpful
they are too, except for the one in clause 528 on page 426: 鈥渀List鈥� includes a
list containing no items.鈥�

Readers who happen to be Zen masters are invited to explain what this
means.