The IgNobel Prizes

If it's Nobel Prize season, that means it's also IgNobel Prize season! Some of the awards that caught my eye:

• ORNITHOLOGY - Ivan Schwab of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for explaining why woodpeckers do not get headaches.
• 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.
• PEACE - Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing a teen-ager repellent -- a device that makes a high-pitched noise that is annoying to teen-agers but inaudible to most adults; and for later using the technology to make cellphone ringtones that teenagers can hear but not their teachers.

I remember when that story on the cellphone ringtone came out and the local newstations went to a mall to test it out. It was amazing how annoyed the teenagers were when the sound was played and their parents couldn't hear anything. The study in Wales was to play the sound in front of corner markets, so the little toughs wouldn't hang around and drive business away. Heh. Treating teenagers like dogs with sound repellent zones. Awesome.