A Little Levity From Dave Barry

 We Need Some
   So far, things are not going well this year and that is unfortunate since most things did not go well for all of last year. It is the case, however, that Dave Barry was able to find some humour in 2024, as he has done for many of the years that came before that awful one. 
  In 2022 his annual year-end review even included some CANCON and for that reason ended up in MM (see, "Year-End CanCon Continued".) He also merited attention in MM for his coverage of the "Great Canadian Worm Wars" of 1993 (see, "On Worms.") That alone should convince you to read on, but, if not, I will also throw in the fact that he has won a Pulitzer Prize and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. 
  He has been a columnist since the 1980s and his year-end one is widely syndicated. It is as lengthy as a very long novel and I will offer a bit of it since I don't think Mr. Barry would mind, or need more money. He begins with a preamble, which is novella-length and then writes almost a chapter for each month. Here is a portion from the introduction and a few samples from just a few of the months. Funny stuff is even found in the title. If this year also turns out to not be funny, at least we can look forward to Mr. Barry's review of it. 

"Dave Barry's 2024 Year in Review: How Many Goofs Can One Nation Endure? The Answer is Boeing in the Wind." (from The Washington Post and found in other newspapers. It is worth looking for the entire column.)

How Stupid Was 2024?

  "Let’s start with the art world, which over the centuries has given humanity so many beautiful, timeless masterpieces. This year, the biggest story involving art, by far, was that a cryptocurrency businessman paid $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for ...
A banana.
Which he ate.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” he told the media.
And that was not the stupidest thing that happened in 2024. It might not even crack the top 10. Because this was also a year when:

*The Olympics awarded medals for breakdancing.

*Fully grown adults got into fights in Target stores over Stanley brand drinking cups, which are part of the national obsession with hydration that causes many Americans to carry large-capacity beverage containers at all times, as if they’re setting off on a trek across the Sahara instead of going to Trader Joe’s.

*Despite multiple instances of property damage, injury and even death, expectant couples continued to insist on revealing the genders of their unborn children by blowing things up instead of simply telling people.

*The number of people who identify as “influencers” continued to grow exponentially, which means that, unless we find a cure, within 10 years everybody on the planet will be trying to make a living by influencing everybody else.

*Hundreds of millions of Americans set all their clocks ahead in March, then set them all back in November, without having the faintest idea why. (Granted, Americans do this every year; we’re just pointing out that it’s stupid.)

* But what made 2024 truly special, in terms of sustained idiocy, was that it was an election year. This meant that day after day, month after month, the average American voter was subjected to a relentless gushing spew of campaign messaging created by political professionals who — no matter what side they’re on — all share one unshakable core belief: that the average American voter has the intellectual capacity of a potted fern. It was a brutal, depressing slog, and it felt as though it would never end. In fact, it may still be going on in California: a state that apparently tabulates its ballots on a defective Etch a Sketch.

  A few monthly samples:
February:
*In a highly controversial decision, the Alabama Supreme Court rules that frozen embryos are, for legal purposes, children, and therefore must immediately be thawed out and provided with iPhones.
*Tucker Carlson conducts a two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, offering Westerners a rare opportunity to find out what the Russian leader really thinks. It turns out he thinks Carlson is a useful idiot.
*In a Super Bowl for the ages, two teams compete against each other under the watchful gaze of Taylor Swift.

April:
*As the tragic situation in Gaza worsens, American college students on a growing number of campuses engage in protests and other dramatic actions intended to draw attention to the single most important issue facing the world: the feelings of American college students.

November: (with a bit of CANCON)

*On election night, the TV networks are teeming with political commentators prepared to analyze and dissect and crunch the numbers far into the night as the nation settles in for the long, grueling process of determining the winner — a process that everyone agrees could go on for days, possibly even weeks, because of the extreme razor-thin closeness of the ...

Never mind. In roughly the same amount of time it takes to air a Geico commercial, the networks determine that Trump has decisively won the election, including all of the so-called battleground states and four Canadian provinces. It’s a stunning result and a massive failure by the expert political analysts, who humbly admit that they had no idea what was happening, and promise that from now on they will be more aware of their limitations.

We are, of course, joking. In a matter of seconds these experts pivot from being spectacularly clueless about what was going to happen in the election to confidently explaining what happened in the election."

December:

*Clearly, this year needs to end. Which is why we’re looking forward to New Year’s Eve — when, in a beloved tradition, thousands of revelers will gather in Times Square to say goodbye to 2024 and welcome 2025. We like to think that on that night, as the seconds tick down to zero and that giant ball starts to descend, the people gazing up at it will all be united, if only for a moment, by a common hope — a hope shared by the millions of us watching on television — specifically, that the giant ball was not manufactured by Boeing.

Also, while we’re hoping, let’s hope that 2025 will be a better year. How could it be worse?

Try not to think about it."

The Ig Nobel Prizes

 STEM Can Be Fun!

   It is still too bright out to be blogging. I need to post something for paying subscribers, however, and for those who stay inside because they are worried about UV rays, or because it is Friday the 13th.  Although I won't have to do much work, this post will keep you busy, especially if you watch the attached video which will take you a couple of hours. I wouldn't post anything that long if it wasn't funny.

   To learn about the Ig Nobel Prizes see my post from seven years ago about "The Nobel Prizes."  Cleverly concealed, along with the "Igs", you will find information about such things as, The Annals of Improbable Research and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. As well, make sure to check the bonus, "The Order of the Golden Fleece."
   This week, the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held at MIT. One of the winners from 2021 is pictured above. He was hung upside down in a study designed to see how rhinos reacted when hung upside down. This year some of the winners include: 
"Demography: Saul Justin Newman, for discovering that people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death record keeping.

Biology: Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk."

    B. F. Skinner finally won an award for a paper done in the 1960s on “the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide their flight paths,” (let's hope the folks at Boeing read it.) The award was accepted by his daughter, who threw her cap into the crowd.
   If you still need more incentive to read my old post, I will add that it also included a short review of the book, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond. If it is CANCON you are looking for, see the chapter in that book which is on "Farting and Belching." 
   The video of the ceremony is found here. I forgot to mention that the winner receives 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.

P.S.
As mentioned, the ceremony was hosted by MIT. If you are still trying to avoid the sun, or something else, see the post in MM about "MIT Press" where you can read something from their "Essential Knowledge Series," to make up for the time you squandered here.