Announcing the 2007 Ig-Nobel Winners

Heh. The full list here. Some selections from three categories:

Linguistics: Juant Manuel Toro, Josep Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Barcelona University, for showing that rats cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards

Peace: The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, for instigating research on a chemical weapon to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other.

Medicine: Brian Witcombe of Gloucester and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, for their report in the British Medical Journal, Sword Swallowing and its Side-Effects.

Side-effects? Seven years of Ig-Nobels here. (Hat tip: Worstall.)