2 posts tagged “2007”

The Seventeenth 1st Annual Ig Nobel were held last night.  In attendance were several Nobel Laureates, past winners, and various other Ignitaries (including the Swedish Meatball Royalty).  The pre-ceremony included a special on-stage experiment based on one of this year's prize winners (Brian Wansink of Cornell University for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, "bottomless" bowl of soup).

Don Featherstone, inventor of the pink flamingo lawn ornament, was among the past winners who got up to make a speech.

This year's theme was "Chicken", and before new winners were announced Doug Zonker delivered the Keynote Address (you'll notice a couple paper airplanes captured in the pictures from the keynote address).  Other ceremony events include a couple "Moments of Science," a mini-opera in three acts titled "Chicken versus Egg," 24/7 Lectures (deliver detailed technical information about a subject in 24 seconds, followed by a 7 word summary that anyone can understand), and the Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate contest.

If one of the prize recipients made a speech that seemed to go on too long, eight year old "Miss Sweety Poo" would walk over to the lectern and repeat the phrase "Please stop, I'm bored" until the recipient stopped talking.

Other moments of note were the Nobel Laureates being given samples of ice cream from Gus Rancatore (owner of Toscanini's Ice Cream) inspired by prize winner Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, who developed a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavoring from cow dung.  Toscanini's in Central Square is giving more samples away at 11am this morning.  The Laureates were once again subject to embarrassment when they were dressed up as eggs for the final act of the opera.  Laureates in attendance were Jerome Friedman (Physics 1990), Roy Glauber (Physics 2005), Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry 1986), William Lipscomb (Chemisty 1976), Craig Mello (Physiology or Medicine 2006), and Rich Roberts (Physiology or Medicine 1993).

Every year for as long as I can remember the local Lions Club sponsors a Fourth of July carnival and fireworks display.  Last year there were "safety risks" during the fireworks display, with debris from the exploding rockets falling on the crowd.  The show was halted for long enough that a lot of people left.  Since there are probably bigger safety concerns in dismantling or transporting unexploded fireworks once they've been set up, the show resumed after about a 45-minute delay.  This year the carnival came to town, but no fireworks.  Apparently a year wasn't enough time to figure out the safety issues (more likely nobody even started thinking about it until about a month ago and couldn't come up with a solution in that time).  So, the birthplace of American liberty had no Fourth of July fireworks display.

With a questionable weather forecast for the evening of July 4th, the plan was to head down to Bristol, RI for their Fourth of July extravaganza.  Bristol hosts the country's oldest annual Independence Day celebration.  A friend met me at the Kendall subway station, where we'd then hoped to ride the 5 stops to Alewife station, hop in the car, and drive to Bristol.  Entering Kendall station, there was a train waiting for us.  Perfect timing!  But not really.  The train wasn't leaving.  It was just sitting there with its doors open.  Eventually an announcement came on that the train was being taken out of service.  Sigh.  We adopted an alternate plan of walking the mile to Central Square, picking up some ice cream at Toscanini's along the way (a scoop each of Kulfi and Gingersnap Molasses).  Yum.

Heading down the stairs into the Central Square station people coming out said that trains weren't running and had been replaced by busses.  Unfortunately, the busses hadn't arrived yet.  Bleh.  The "T" is notoriously inefficient when the system breaks down.  We thought about waiting for a bus, but since it was such a beautiful day I suggested walking another mile to Harvard Square, where we were greeted by a line of over 100 people waiting for busses.  Oops.  Bad call on my part.  Since we didn't feel like waiting in line, we started walking on to Porter Square (about another mile).  People were entering the station, so we headed down the long escalator, only to discover a "T" employee at the base of the stairs telling people that outbound service wasn't running (see previous statement about inefficiency).  We climbed back up the stairs and hopped on the bus which went through Davis Square before finally arriving at Alewife.  Ironically, during the bus ride the trains started running again, so we arrived at the same time as a train.  The normal 15-minute ride took us almost two hours.  [Apparently a broken transformer caused a power outage.]

Needless to say, the delay put a wrinkle in our plan of exploring Bristol before the fireworks.  We arrived just as it was starting to get dark, grabbed some take-out from Papa Joe's Wrap Shack for dinner, and found a patch of grass to listen to the pre-fireworks concert (and set up the tripod).  Having never been to Bristol for the Fourth, we figured since everyone was sitting focused on the bandstand that the fireworks would be nearby.  When the fireworks began, we discovered that they were behind us and on the other side of some trees.  Oops (again).  Luckily there was plenty of space so we were able to pick up our stuff and find a good viewing location, as you can see from the pictures.

With the rainy weather, I didn't even bother trying to get to the Boston fireworks display.