" The 17th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony announced and introduced the ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The winners are traveling to the ceremony, at their own expense, from several continents. The Prizes will be handed to them by a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, all before a standing-room only audience of 1200 people." This years prizes include:
Linguistics
A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.
Economics
Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.