Firemen, Cheese Sarnies and Ig Nobel Prizes

Bee's post about her narrow escape from a fiery fate and her close encounter with some allegedly "hot" firemen was very entertaining. Perhaps she should follow the example of the British woman had to be rescued by firefighters from a laundrette when she got her hand stuck in a dryer. It doesn't say whether it was Dryer 13 or not, nor does it say anything about the hotness or otherwise of her rescuers. One word of warning, Bee. They're not always firemen:


Not far away from that laundrette, at the University of Bristol, scientists have come up with an equation for making the perfect cheese sandwich:

W=[1 + ((bd)/6.5)) - s + ((m-2c)/2) + ((v+p)/7t)] (100 + l/100).

Actually, it's an equation to work out how thickly you should cut the cheese once you've decided things like the type of cheese, bread, how much salad, margarine and mayo to use, etc.

I hope that the British Cheese Council, who funded this, are happy with the result. They could have just asked me, of course. My equation would involve strong mature cheddar, pickled onions, Helmann's Mayonaise and a bit of pepper. But what do I know. The scientist who worked out that equation won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering the best way to dunk biscuits in tea.

If he'd asked me, I'd have suggested that he stick to dunking Ginger Nuts in Coffee, which is by far the best way.

Anyway, this got me looking into the Ig Nobel prize. In 1999, the year that Dunking Doctor Fisher picked up his award, the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature was won by the British Standards Institute for their 6 page BS 6008, which describes how to make a cup of tea.


Last year three Spaniards won the Prize for Linguists for discovering that sometimes rats can't tell the difference between someone speaking Japanese backwards and someone speaking Dutch backwards. Clearly research that will change our lives.

I'm hoping that I'll get nominated, just as soon as I publish my forthcoming paper "Analytic Methods for Calculating the Optimal Ingredients of Soy Sauce to Make the Perfect Green Bean Casserole". Unfortunately, I'm having some difficulty getting funding for this important research...