Apparently I missed this, but the 2009 Ig Nobel prizes were awarded a couple of days ago. There’s a lot of good stuff this year, so it’s hard to pick a favorite; you have people making diamonds from tequila, demonstrating that beer bottles can crack human skulls, turning bras into facemasks, and reducing garbage mass by 90% using… wait for it… panda poop. That said, I think my favorite is this one right here–the winners of the Economics prize:
The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic Banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.
And yes, I do feel bad about myself for finding that funny.
[h/t: Language Log]