CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, USA — On Thursday night, September 22, the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize winners will be announced — and showered with applause and paper airplanes — at Harvard University. They will be honored for achievements that first make people LAUGH, and then make them THINK.
This will be the Twenty-Sixth 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Organized by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), in cooperation with several Harvard student groups, it celebrates the unusual, honors the imaginative, and spurs interest in science.
THE WINNERS: Ten (10) new Ig Nobel Prizes will be awarded. The identity of the winners is kept secret until they receive their prize on stage.
Genuine Nobel laureates will physically hand the prizes to the winners. Attending the ceremony will be: Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986), Eric Maskin (economics, 2007), Rich Roberts (physiology or medicine, 1993), and Roy Glauber (physics, 2005).
THEME: The theme of this year’s ceremony (though not necessarily of the individual prizes) is: TIME.
ALSO: The ceremony will also include:
· MINI-OPERA: The premiere of “The Last Second“, a mini-opera about a plot to secretly add a extra leap second to the world’s clocks. [NOTE: At the end of this year, scientists will add a leap second to the world’s clocks; one of those scientists, Dr. John Lowe of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, play a role in this mini-opera.]
· THE 24/7 LECTURES, in which several of the world’s top thinkers each explains his or her subject twice — first in TWENTY-FOUR (24) SECONDS, and then, clearly, in SEVEN (7) WORDS. This year’s 24/7 Lecturers, and their topics, include: Patricia Brennan (biologist renowned for studies on the morphological evolution of reproductive structures): DUCK GENITAL MORPHOLOGY; Nicole Sharp (creator of FYFD, the world’s most popular web site about fluid dynamics): Fluid Dynamics; Rich Roberts (Nobel laureate, physiology or medicine): CLOCK GENES; Dudley Herschbach (Nobel laureate, chemistry): TIME.
Last year (2015) the honorees included: The Japanese and Slovakian researchers who studied the biomedical benefits or biomedical consequences of intense kissing (and other intimate, interpersonal activities); the Panamanian entomologist who arranged for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm). and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft); and the Australian/American team who partially un-boiled an egg.
WEBCAST: This year’s ceremony will be webcast live (for the 22nd straight year — the 1995 Ig Nobel ceremony was one of the very first events ever to be webcast). There will be webcast-watching parties around the world.
THE CEREMONY:
WHAT: 2016 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
WHEN: Thursday, September 22, 2016, 6:00 pm (US eastern time)
WHERE: Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov has said he’s leaving next June.
‘After nearly a decade serving as president, and with the recent completion of the new Strategic Plan and the successful comprehensive campaign, I have decided this will be my last year at Oberlin,’ said Krislov, 56.
The liberal-arts college, with its important music faculty, has been caught up in social turbulence.
The veteran violin teacher takes a dim view of the recent Isaac Stern contest in Shanghai. Here’s what he tells Slipped Disc:
No surprises with the result of The Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition.
With the convoluted scoring system, judges were allowed to vote for their pupils giving excessively high marks, and lower grades to worthy competitors. When will competitions adopt the simple rule that can bring about an honest winner?
Teachers who accept the role of being a juror, cannot have a student in the competition. In a court of law, familiarity forbids being a juror , and the same rule should be applied in competitions to achieve fairness .
This unfair practice has become more prevalent in recent years ,where top prizes are invariably students of the jury chairman or teacher on the jury. Their tactics are hidden because many outstanding talents are eliminated in early rounds with deliberately lower scores.
After carefully examining the complex scoring in The Shanghai competition, I am wondering how this esteemed panel arrived at a decision.
From the mixed scores of the final round , I am sure they are equally as bewildered.
There have been few late cancellations this year, but this is a tricky one:
Prom 74 (Friday 9 September)
Please note that due to illness Michael Fabiano is unable to perform in this Prom. We are pleased to announce that tenor Dimitri Pittas will now take his place for the performance of Verdi’s Requiem.
We have been informed of the death of Laurens Tan, a Dutch bass recorder virtuoso and composer who lived in near-seclusion. Everything is unverified about him, including his date of birth.
But his music lives on.
There’s Kirill, incoming music director of the Berlin Phil.
There’s Vasily, music director of the Liverpool and Oslo Phil.
And now there’s Mikhail Petrenko, singing Jacopo Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra at La Scala.
Perhaps we need to number them.
We keep getting pestered by her London PRs to use the latest posed images of Birmingham’s new chief, Mirga Gražinyté-Tyla. Since the pics are unnatural and look nothing like her, we have spared you the ordeal.
Instead, here’s a new shot from the LA Times, accompanied by a nice profile piece.
(c) Lawrence Ho/LATimes
Hair today, Brum tomorrow.
We reported the divvying up of the former Ingpen & Williams among two other agencies.
A third section has come to rest with Maestro Arts (Van Walsum) where Thomas Hull is taking two Brendels, Paul Lewis, Till Fellner, Allan Clayton, William Lacey, Richard Farnes, Aleksander Markovich, and many others.
It seems a shame that no part of the firm as continued the well-loved Ingpen & Williams name.
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra has appointed Christopher Hart as its new principal trumpet, replacing John Gracie, who is retiring after 35 years.
Chris, who is 25, can look forward to a long innings.
The RSNO has also signed Lena Zeliszewska, 33, from the CBSO as Associate Principal First Violin.
press release:
Last night, Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed soprano Rebecca Evans, baritone Mark Stone, composer Raymond Yiu at 10 Downing Street, as part of an event for supporters of The Passage – London’s largest homelessness charity.
The reception – one of the Prime Minister’s first since taking office in July – also launched this year’s “A Night Under The Stars” concert, which raises money for The Passage’s work with homeless and vulnerable people.
L-R Antonio Orlando, Theresa May, Tom Stone, Mark Stone, Rebecca Evans, Ray Yiu (c) Zoe Norfolk
When Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Auschwitz opera The Passenger receives its Russian premiere next month in Yekaterinburg, 100 seats will be set aside for former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps.
It’s a lovely gesture, totally original. A pity we did not think to do the same when the opera had its London premiere.
