Free Lantern

The winners of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes were announced. The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” Organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater.
The 2007 Ig Nobel prize for medicine was given to a study of the side effects of “sword swallowing”.
The prize for Chemistry was awarded to a Japanese scientist who has discovered how to extract vanillin, the essence of vanilla flavor, from cow dung.

To read more check out these links:
An Ig Nobel diary
Ig Nobel Prizes Stranger Than Fiction