Luxury car-crushing mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania wins Harvard Ig Noble award

Harvard University may or may not be the best institution of higher education in, say, Law or Medicine or Economics.

It is, however, Number One in generating publicity for itself, either by ripping off real awards winners with its own knockoffs or burnishing its own goofs, like Hasty Pudding, by luring celebrities who can be bought off cheaply by the mere spectre of basking in the luster of an Ivy League which would never have invited them to campus under normal circumstances.

PHYSIOLOGY PRIZE:  For a study concluding that there is no evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: For the invention of the wasabi alarm (airborne wasabi [pungent horseradish] utilized for waking people in the case of fire or other emergency).
MEDICINE PRIZE: For a study demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things — when they have a strong urge to urinate.
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: For a study whose purpose was to try to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.
LITERATURE PRIZE: For the Theory of Structured Procrastination: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.
BIOLOGY PRIZE: For a study that investigated why a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle.
PHYSICS PRIZE: For a paper that studied why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don’t.
MATHEMATICS PRIZE: To six pundits, all of whom predicted that the world would end on a number of different dates, for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.
PEACE PRIZE: To 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.