Improbable Awards

The 2005 Ig Nobel awards have been announced:

-- PHYSICS: Since 1927, researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have been tracking a glob of congealed black tar as it drips through a funnel -- at a rate of one drop every nine years.

-- PEACE: Two researchers at Newcastle University in England monitored the brain activity of locusts as they watched clips from the movie ''Star Wars.''

-- CHEMISTRY: An experiment at the University of Minnesota was designed to prove whether people can swim faster or slower in syrup than in water.

Other prizes include biology

Smith's team studied and catalogued different scents emitted by more than 100 species of frogs under stress. Some smelled like cashews, while others smelled like licorice, mint or rotting fish.

and medicine, which went the inventor of fake testicles for neutered dogs. If you want this stuff more than once a year, you can subscribe to the Annals of Improbable Research, or just read their blog....

Update: The full list is out, and it includes the award for

NUTRITION: Dr. Yoshiro Nakamats of Tokyo, Japan, for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting).

Yoshiro Nakamats (yes, that's how he spells it in English; in Japanese he uses "dokutaa" instead of "sensei" too) is better known as the inventor of the floppy disk.