Initiated by Blowdart and continued by me because of practical node-length limits
1996
BIOLOGY
Anders Barheim and Hogne Sandvik of the University of Bergen, Norway, for their tasty and tasteful report, "Effect of Ale, Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches." (Published in "British Medical Journal," vol. 309, Dec 24-31, 1994, p. 1689.)
MEDICINE
James Johnston of R.J. Reynolds, Joseph Taddeo of U.S. Tobaccco, Andrew Tisch of Lorillard, William Campbell of Philip Morris, and the late Thomas E. Sandefur, Jr., chairman of Brown and Williamson Tobacco Co. for their unshakable discovery, as testified to the US Congress, that nicotine is not addictive.
PHYSICS
Robert Matthews of Aston University, England, for his studies of Murphy's Law, and especially for demonstrating that toast often falls on the buttered side. (REFERENCE: "Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the fundamental constants," "European Journal of Physics," vol.16, no.4, July 18, 1995, p. 172-6.)
PEACE
Jacques Chirac, President of France, for commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic bomb tests in the Pacific.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Ellen Kleist of Nuuk, Greenland and Harald Moi of Oslo, Norway, for their cautionary medical report "Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll." (Published in "Genitourinary Medicine," vol. 69, no. 4, Aug. 1993, p. 322.)
CHEMISTRY
George Goble of Purdue University, for his blistering world record time for igniting a barbeque grill-three seconds, using charcoal and liquid oxygen.
BIODIVERSITY
Chonosuke Okamura of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory in Nagoya, Japan, for discovering the fossils of dinosaurs, horses, dragons, princesses, and more than 1000 other extinct "mini-species," each of which is less than 1/100 of an inch in length. (REFERENCE: the series "Reports of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory," published by the Okamura Fossil Laboratory in Nagoya, Japan during the 1970's and 1980's.)
LITERATURE
The editors of the journal "Social Text," for eagerly publishing research that they could not understand, that the author said was meaningless, and which claimed that reality does not exist. (The paper was "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," Alan Sokal, "Social Text," Spring/Summer 1996, pp. 217-252.)
ECONOMICS
Dr. Robert J. Genco of the University of Buffalo for his discovery that "financial strain is a risk indicator for destructive periodontal disease.
ART
Don Featherstone of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, for his ornamentally evolutionary invention, the plastic pink flamingo. (REFERENCE: "Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass")
1995
NUTRITION
John Martinez of J. Martinez & Company in Atlanta, for Luak Coffee, the world's most expensive coffee, which is made from coffee beans ingested and excreted by the luak (aka, the palm civet), a bobcat-like animal native to Indonesia.
PHYSICS
D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and A.C. Smith, of the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, England, for their rigorous analysis of soggy breakfast cereal, published in the report entitled "A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes." (Published in "Powder Technology," November, 1994, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 189-96.)
ECONOMICS
Awarded jointly to Nick Leeson and his superiors at Barings Bank and to Robert Citron of Orange County, California, for using the calculus of derivatives to demonstrate that every financial institution has its limits. (REFERENCE: "Barings Lost : Nick Leeson and the Collapse of Barings Plc," and "Big Bets Gone Bad")
MEDICINE
Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael R. Boyle, for their invigorating study entitled "The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition." (Published in "International Journal of Neuroscience," vol. 57, 1991, pp. 239- 249.)
LITERATURE
David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison, Wisconsin, for their deeply penetrating research report, "Rectal foreign bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature." The citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a ]beer glass]; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine. (Published in "Surgery," September 1986, pp. 512-519.)
PEACE
The Taiwan National Parliament, for demonstrating that politicians gain more by punching, kicking and gouging each other than by waging war against other nations.
PSYCHOLOGY
Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita, of Keio University, for their success in training pigeons to discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet. (REFERENCE: "Pigeons' Discrimination of Paintings by Monet and Picasso," "Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior," vol. 63, 1995, pp. 165-174.)
PUBLIC HEALTH
Martha Kold Bakkevig of Sintef Unimed in Trondheim, Norway, and Ruth Nielson of the Technical University of Denmark, for their exhaustive study, "Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold." (Published in "Ergonomics," vol 37, no. 8, Aug. 1994 , pp. 1375-89.)
DENTISTRY
Robert H. Beaumont, of Shoreview, Minnesota, for his incisive study "Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental Floss." ," vol. 61, no. 2, Feb. 1990, pp. 123-5.
CHEMISTRY
Bijan Pakzad of Beverly Hills, for creating DNA Cologne and DNA Perfume, neither of which contain deoxyribonucleic acid, and both of which come in a triple helix bottle.
1994
BIOLOGY
W. Brian Sweeney, Brian Krafte-Jacobs, Jeffrey W. Britton, and Wayne Hansen, for their breakthrough study, "The Constipated Serviceman: Prevalence Among Deployed US Troops," and especially for their numerical analysis of bowel movement frequency. (Published in "Military Medicine," vol. 158, August, 1993, pp. 346-348.)
PEACE
John Hagelin of Maharishi University and The Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, promulgator of peaceful thoughts, for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C. (REFERENCE: "Interim Report: Results of the National Demonstration Project To Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental Effectiveness In Washington, D.C., June 7 to July 30, 1993," Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, Fairfield, Iowa")
MEDICINE
This prize is awarded in two parts. First, to Patient X, formerly of the US Marine Corps, valiant victim of a venomous bite from his pet rattlesnake, for his determined use of electroshock therapy -- at his own insistence, automobile sparkplug wires were attached to his lip, and the car engine revved to 3000 rpm for five minutes. Second, to Dr. Richard C. Dart of the Rocky Mountain Poison Center and Dr. Richard A. Gustafson of The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, for their well-grounded medical report: "Failure of Electric Shock Treatment for Rattlesnake Envenomation." (Published in "Annals of Emergency Medicine," vol. 20, no. 6, June 1991, pp. 659-61.)
ENTOMOLOGY
Robert A. Lopez of Westport, NY, valiant veterinarian and friend of all creatures great and small, for his series of experiments in obtaining ear mites from cats, inserting them into his own ear, and carefully observing and analyzing the results. (Published in "The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association," vol. 203, no. 5, Sept. 1, 1993, pp. 606-7.)
PSYCHOLOGY
Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, practitioner of the psychology of negative reinforcement, for his thirty-year study of the effects of punishing three million citizens of Singapore whenever they spat, chewed gum, or fed pigeons.
PHYSICS
The Japanese Meterological Agency, for its seven-year study of whether earthquakes are caused by catfish wiggling their tails.
LITERATURE
L. Ron Hubbard, ardent author of science fiction and founding father of Scientology, for his crackling Good Book, "Dianetics," which is highly profitable to mankind or to a portion thereof.
CHEMISTRY
Texas State Senator Bob Glasgow, wise writer of logical legislation, for sponsoring the 1989 drug control law which make it illegal to purchase beakers, flasks, test tubes, or other laboratory glassware without a permit.
ECONOMICS
Jan Pablo Davila of Chile, tireless trader of financial futures and former employee of the state-owned Codelco Company, for instructing his computer to "buy" when he meant "sell," and subsequently attempting to recoup his losses by making increasingly unprofitable trades that ultimately lost .5 percent of Chile's gross national product. Davila's relentless achievement inspired his countrymen to coin a new verb: " davilar," meaning, "to botch things up royally."
MATHEMATICS
The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama, mathematical measurers of morality, for their county-by-county estimate of how many Alabama citizens will go to Hell if they don't repent.
1993
PSYCHOLOGY
John Mack of Harvard Medical School and David Jacobs of Temple University, mental visionaries, for their leaping conclusion that people who believe they were kidnapped by aliens from outer space, probably were -- and especially for their conclusion "the focus of the abduction is the production of children. (REFERENCE: "Secret Life : Firsthand, Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions")
CONSUMER ENGINEERING
Ron Popeil, incessant inventor and perpetual pitchman of late night television, for redefining the industrial revolution with such devices as the Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman, the Cap Snaffler, Mr. Microphone, and the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler. (REFERENCE: "The Salesman of the Century : Inventing, Marketing, and Selling on TV : How I Did It and How You Can Too!")
BIOLOGY
Paul Williams Jr. of the Oregon State Health Division and Kenneth W. Newell of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, bold biological detectives, for their pioneering study, "Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs." (Published in American Journal of Public Health and the Nation's Health, vol. 60, no. 5, May 1970, pp. 926-9.)
ECONOMICS
Ravi Batra of Southern Methodist University, shrewd economist and best-selling author of "The Great Depression of 1990" ($17.95) and "Surviving the Great Depression of 1990" ($18.95), for selling enough copies of his books to single-handedly prevent worldwide economic collapse.
PEACE
The Pepsi-Cola Company of the Phillipines, suppliers of sugary hopes and dreams, for sponsoring a contest to create a millionaire, and then announcing the wrong winning number, thereby inciting and uniting 800,000 riotously expectant winners, and bringing many warring factions together for the first time in their nation's history.
VISIONARY TECHNOLOGY
Presented jointly to Jay Schiffman of Farmington Hills, Michigan, crack inventor of AutoVision, an image projection device that makes it possible to drive a car and watch television at the same time, and to the Michigan state legislature, for making it legal to do so.
CHEMISTRY
James Campbell and Gaines Campbell of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, dedicated deliverers of fragrance, for inventing scent strips, the odious method by which perfume is applied to magazine pages.
LITERATURE
E. Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P. W. Armstrong, and their 972 co-authors, for publishing a medical research paper which has one hundred times as many authors as pages. (The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 329, no. 10, September 2, 1993, pp. 673-82.)
MATHEMATICS
Robert Faid of Greenville, South Carolina, farsighted and faithful seer of statistics, for calculating the exact odds (8,606,091,751,882:1) that Mikhail Gorbachev is the Antichrist. (REFERENCE: "Gorbachev! Has the Real Antichrist Come?")
PHYSICS
Louis Kervran of France, ardent admirer of alchemy, for his
conclusion that the calcium in chickens' eggshells is created by a process of cold fusion. (REFERENCE: "Biological Transmutations and their applications in: Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Ecology, Medicine, Nutrition, Agronomy, Geology")
MEDICINE
James F. Nolan, Thomas J. Stillwell, and John P. Sands, Jr., medical men of mercy, for their painstaking research report, "Acute Management of the Zipper-Entrapped Penis." (Published in Journal of Emergency Medicine, vol. 8, no. 3, May/June 1990, pp. 305-7.)