The Ig Noble Peace Prize Awarded for Crushing Cars Parked in the Bike Lane

I love the Ig Noble awards. I love them even more now that they awarded the 2011 Ig Noble Peace Prize for this:

PEACE PRIZE: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, LITHUANIA, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

REFERENCE: VIDEO and OFFICIAL CITY INFO

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Arturas Zuokas

Here is an important field experiment in driver safety:

PUBLIC SAFETY PRIZE: John Senders of the University of Toronto, CANADA, for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.

REFERENCE: "The Attentional Demand of Automobile Driving," John W. Senders, et al., Highway Research Record, vol. 195, 1967, pp. 15-33. VIDEO

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: John Senders

And since this is a blog post, I'll mention the prize for literature:

LITERATURE PRIZE: John Perry of Stanford University, USA, for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important.

REFERENCE: "How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done," John Perry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 1996. Later republished elsewhere under the title "Structured Procrastination."

ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Colleague Deborah Wilkes accepted the prize on behalf of Professor Perry.

My Monday lecture isn't writing itself.

You can watch the whole ceremony here: