Chad's News

This year’s Ig Nobel prizes were awarded on September 30^th. Once again it was a fairly weak field, but here are some of the better ones (see the linked article for the full list):

• Management Prize: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. [Related: The Peter Principle]
• Peace Prize: Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.
• Medicine Prize: Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University, The Netherlands, for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride.

Link: http://improbable.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, decided to build an environmentally friendly house. What he didn’t realize was just how difficult that would be. In the linked article, he discusses the problems he encountered as well as some of the lessons he learned.

Link: http://online.wsj.com/…
(via Slashdot)

The news is not that ThinkGeek is selling a parody product called Canned Unicorn Meat. Nope, the news is that the National Pork Board, owner of “the other white meat” slogan, took it seriously enough to send a cease and desist letter over the phrase, “the new white meat.”

Link: http://www.thinkgeek.com/…

In the older, analog world of video, any degradation in the signal due to cheap cabling would cause a corresponding degradation in the picture. So super-high-quality, gold plated, and hideously expensive cables made a certain amount of sense. But in the digital world, you can have a severe amount of signal degradation without any loss in picture quality. The $6.00 cable really is just as good as the $250.00 cable. In fact, you may see more degradation from your cable or satellite provider than you’ll ever get from cabling.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

Scurvy is a potentially fatal illness caused by a lack of vitamin C. Historically it was a problem for sailors, who went out to sea for long periods on a restricted diet. The cure (eating citrus fruit, fresh meat, etc.) has been known since at least the 15th century, but in a tragic comedy of errors this fact was repeatedly forgotten, misapplied, or misunderstood. It wasn’t until 1932 that vitamin C was identified and definitively shown to be the “cure” for scurvy. The linked article explains the long history, with special emphasis on Robert Falcon Scott’s disastrous Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole.

Link: http://idlewords.com/…
(via Neatorama)

From the article: “North Korea’s New Year’s wish of seeing the destruction of a massive concrete wall dividing the Korean peninsula never seems to come true — mostly because there is no such barrier.”

Link: http://www.reuters.com/…

A man who claims he is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation is suing his neighbor for using her iPhone at home.

Link: http://sfreporter.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

The 2009 Darwin Awards are out, and the winners are two bank robbers killed by crushing debt. Here at Chad’s News, we think one of the runner-ups (dying to go) was more deserving, but the judges were obviously swayed by the rare phenomenon of having two people remove themselves from the gene pool with a single action.

Link: http://www.darwinawards.com/
(via Neatorama)

Astute Chad’s News readers already know that the State of California has severe financial problems, and that its politicians are desperately looking for ways to make ends meet. Their latest idea is to increase tax withholding by about 10 percent. Note that they’re not actually increasing the tax rate, just the amount that is withheld by employers. In essence, this forces California citizens to give short-term, interest-free loans to the state.

Here in Colorado, our finances, while a bit strained, are not even close to being as bad as California’s—primarily because of the TABOR amendment which put serious curbs on the expansion of government spending.

Thanks to Ciro for this link.

Link: http://www.latimes.com/business/…

This year’s Ig Nobel prizes were awarded on October 1st. It was a fairly weak field, but here are some of the better ones (see the linked article for the full list):

• Medicine: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years.
• Veterinary Medicine: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.
• Peace Prize: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
• Chemistry: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.

Link: http://improbable.com/…
(via Neatorama)

So you’ve got a brand new bachelors degree but can’t find a job. What do you do? Sue the college, of course! Trina Thompson filed a lawsuit against her alma mater, New York’s Monroe College, for $70,000 to reimburse her tuition and $2,000 to compensate for the stress of her job search.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/…
(via digg)

According to the New York Attorney General, three major banks paid out nearly $18 billion in bonuses, yet only managed to drum up $9.6 billion in revenue. That’s revenue, not profit. They gave bonuses worth almost twice their total income. Seems pretty absurd to me.

Link: http://consumerist.com/…