The Artistry of War

Thought for the day: All warfare is based on deception. [Sun Tze, 545 BC-470 BC]

[image source: wikipedia]

The thought for the day comes from an ancient book, The Art of War, which was written many centuries ago by Sun Tze, a Chinese general, military strategist, philosopher and writer. That particular passage continues: Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

Deception. It can win wars, and the more clever the deception, the more effectively it works. I reckon everybody's familiar with the classic tale of the Trojan Horse, but have you ever heard of World War II's Ghost Army?

Nope, they weren't literally a group of deceased spirits looking after the soldiers, but their behind-the-scenes top secret missions sure did save a lot of lives. I guess you could say they were... weapons of mass deception. (Sorry.) Their mission: to deceive the enemy, and their work was done in complete anonymity and without acknowledgement. In fact, their fellow soldiers didn't even know their unit existed, let alone what they did... until 1996, when the U.S. government declassified the existence of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. AKA the Ghost Army. Some of their missions remain classified today.

[source: National Archives]

Looking at this photo, you might think these guys possessed some kind of super strength. But nope, they weren't super-strong. In fact, the 1100 men of this unit were recruited from places like art schools and ad agencies. What the government wanted... what they needed... were artists, illustrators, actors, sound specialists, and radio experts. People with good minds and an active sense of creativity. The ability to create illusions and to think outside the box. Because they used inflatable tanks, sound trucks, fake radio transmissions, and scripts that were worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille production.

[source: National Archives]

Staging more than twenty battlefield deceptions... that we know of... including the largest deception in military history, which they carried out on D-day, it's estimated that their ability to fool the Germans saved more than twenty thousand lives. With their hard work and ingenuity, their tactics made their small unit appear to be 30,000 strong.

[source: National Archives]

Here's one of their pieces of rubber artillery. Standard procedure was to inflate tanks, cannons, jeeps, trucks and airplanes and then camouflage them in such a way that German reconnaissance planes flying overhead could detect them. They created fake airfields, soldier bivouacs, (right down to laundry hanging on the clotheslines) motor pools, artillery batteries, and tank formations... all with a few hours notice.

On D-Day, their deception convinced the Germans that the attack was coming from Calais, which is about two hundred miles north of the actual attack site at Normandy.

[source: National Archives]

One of their fake planes.

[source: National Archives]

Even fake landing craft.

[source: National Archives]

Five hundred-pound speakers played an important part in their ruses, too. Prior to deploying to Europe, some Bell Labs engineers worked with a team from this unit to create state-of-the-art recordings of armored and infantry units at Fort Knox. Various mixtures of these sound effects would be blasted from these speakers to give the sonic deceptions they needed to create their auditory illusions.

They even transmitted what they called spoof radio. They conducted fake traffic nets, impersonating real operators from other units. Although Morse Code involves sending dots and dashes, each operator has a distinctive way of doing it, called his fist. These guys even knew how to impersonate an individual operators' fist, so the enemy wouldn't know the real operator... and his entire unit... were no longer in the area.



Lest you think I'm trying to romanticize war, I'm not. But what these guys did is remarkable, and now that part of their story has been told, I wanted to share it with you. What can I say? I'm a history nerd, and I thought this was a fascinating story. PBS did a documentary about them a few years, but I missed it. (Doggone it!) But here's a trailer for that show:

             Amazing story, isn't it? I wonder what else we don't know about World War II...?

                          Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality. [John McCain]

Wars are poor chisels for carving out a peaceful tomorrow. [Martin Luther King, Jr.]

If we don't end war, war will end us. [H.G. Wells]

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. [Dwight D. Eisenhower]

Hate war... but love and appreciate those who fight and sacrifice in them for our benefit. [me]

Putting Pants on a Cat

Thought for the day:  Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen. [Ketrina Monroe]

Yep, you guessed it. It's that time again. Welcome to this month's edition of the Insecure Writer's Support Group meeting... er, virtual meeting, that is. This, the first Wednesday of the month, is the time when writers all over the world post about the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the ins and outs... of writing. We celebrate... we complain... we commiserate. Whatever we need, this is the place to find it. Humble thanks and a jolly tip of the hat go to Alex Cavanaugh, our fearless ninja leader and the originator of this fine group, and thanks to all of the other folks who've pitched in to make this group such a rousing success. If you'd like to join (It's FREE!) or would like to read some of the other posts, please go HERE

[image courtesy of morguefile]

I think the love of storytelling is an intrinsic part of human nature, don't you? Long before the written word, ancient people recorded their stories with pictures drawn on cave walls. In many, if not all cultures, those individuals blessed with a talent for spinning imaginative verbal tales were highly esteemed, and the stories they told were passed down for generations. (However, alas, I betcha they rarely earned enough to put food on their humble rock table...) Various kinds of art, including interpretive dance, music, art, photos and films, as well as the written word, serve as outlets that continue to tell our stories today. It's how we communicate. How we relate. How we learn to understand each other, the world, and ourselves.

We can't help ourselves. Especially writers. Almost everything we see is subject to being interpreted through our writers' eyes as a possible story, as an avenue for pursuing another what if. In 1944, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel conducted an experiment designed to explore this phenomenon. Check out their video and see if your mind automatically creates a story from it.

        Pretty cool, huh? (Way cooler than a Rorschach inkblot.)

Time for this month's question:

What publishing path did you take, and why?

I'm tired of the anonymity of being an unpublished author. I crave the anonymity of being self-published. [Tristan Durie]

To be perfectly honest, I'm not familiar with Tristan Durie (Probably because he's still enjoying his anonymity...HA!) but I like that quote. 

Not that any concern about being anonymous played a part in my decision to self-publish. I went the normal route for a while... querying agents and jumping through their hoops... sending them synopses of their specifically designated length and the number of pages they wanted me to submit, blah, blah, blah. I even started a blog because so many of them told me to do so to establish a platform. (Now, that I don't regret! Not that I think of you guys as a platform... you've simply become friends.)

In between the querying, synopses and setting up a blog, I submitted a short story to a magazine, and it was accepted. Woo-HOO! Getting that check for eight hundred dollars gave me validation, and made me feel like I really was a writer, but as much as I appreciated getting that money, I hated the way the magazine edited my story.

Then it was back to waiting. Waiting for an agent to give me a green light, and then there would've probably been another interminable wait until said imaginary agent found a publisher willing to take a chance on me. With no advance, of course, because they've kinda gone the way of the dodo bird for unknown writers. Skimpy royalties, too. And if the book didn't do well within the first six months, it'd be pretty much relegated to obscurity. Publishing companies have no stomach for wasting time publicizing a new writer who isn't making money for them. It's sink or swim.

And I thought... Ya know what? I'm too old for this crap.I can relegate my books to obscurity all by myself.

(So far, so good.) 

Publishing can be tough. It can kill dreams. [Michael Stackpole]

Yep, constant rejections can cause those dreams to wilt a bit. The sheer number of years it can take before a book makes it into print, assuming one ever gets an agent or publisher willing to invest in your career, can be daunting for a young person, but for someone my age? Nope. For me, it was far better to take control of things myself. 

And BONUS: I never have to write a query or synopsis again!

The only rejection I stand to face is from readers, but even though the reviews have been scantier than I would've liked, there has only been one bad review. That, and a one-star rating from some dude in Morocco. (If he read Hot Flashes and Cold Lemonade, I'll eat my hat... and yours, too.)

Self-editing a novel is like trying to put pants on a cat; yes, it's painful and time-consuming, but in the end, satisfying. [Robert Jack]

Hmmm, I doubt if the cat would agree.

At any rate, there ya have it. At this stage in my life, self-publishing is definitely the best choice for me. I have complete control over content, cover, and all the rest. And no high-pressure deadlines! 

Life is good.

                    Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other. 

Imagination Plus Talent Equals Success

Thought for the day:  You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. [Mark Twain]

It doesn't require much imagination to appreciate what an overabundance of imagination our feline friends have. Ever watch 'em stare at a wall? For hours? What do they see...? Or how about when they gaze mesmerized at the ceiling? (Just to make us look up, I suspect.) And then there's the times they suddenly jump up and tear out of the room at top speed, as if they're off on some important mission.

Yep, no doubt about it. A cat's imagination can provide us with great entertainment. Come to think of it, I could say the same thing about writers with great imaginations, too. Imaginative writers who can create a whole new world and transport us there with their words truly have a gift. (And they never jump on your head or lick your face in the middle of the night, either. At least, none of the writers I know do...)

Like this gal. Dianne Salerni. She's a writer with a great nose for a story. That's what led her to research and write two YA historical novels, We Hear the Dead, about the early days of spiritualism, and The Caged Graves, about a couple of, um... caged graves.  A couple of real caged graves she spotted in a Pennsylvania cemetery. It took a lot of digging (HA) to ferret out as many facts as she could for both of those books, and a good deal of imagination to flesh out the bare bones of history to create books as good as those two. But her next book took her imagination to the next level. (Kinda like going from staring at the wall to looking into the future...)

The first book in her imagination-out-the-wazoo MG series the Eighth Day came out last year. Reeeeally good.

And NOW... (ta DA!) the second book in this series is gonna be released on January 27, just a couple short weeks away. I may not be in the MG category... heck, some of my GRANDKIDS are even beyond that... but I WILL be reading this book. Know why? Because good is good, and Dianne's books are... good. And did I mention? Very imaginative.

And now, I'm very pleased to say that the lovely Dianne has agreed to answer some very nosy questions I asked her recently. Hey! Inquiring minds want to know!

So here we go, for your entertainment:





ME:  So how did it go down, Dianne? Were you just sitting back in your easy chair one evening, sipping an adult beverage, and listening to an old Beatles album when they started singing Eight Days a Week, and a light bulb suddenly went off in your head? I mean, what inspired you to come up with such a super cool idea as a secret eighth day of the week?

DIANNE: The idea of a secret day came from a family joke. Whenever my daughters asked my husband when they could do something (go to the beach or to an amusement park, for example) and he didn’t have an answer handy, he’d say, “We’ll do it on Grunsday!”  One night, as this joke was being played out over dinner conversation, I wondered out loud, “What if there really was a Grunsday, but only a few people knew about it?” My family loved the idea, but after that initial thought, it took about 18 months for me to come up with a plot to go along with the premise and start writing.

ME:  It must be fun to write continuing tales about characters you know and love, but how difficult is it to strike a balance, such that you include enough background information to draw and keep the interest of new readers, without annoying your return readers who want to get on with the new story without too much back-pedaling and re-hashing? In other words, is it your goal for each book to stand on its own, or are you primarily trying to develop a returning fan base of readers who will eagerly await each new installment? Yeah, I know... BOTH! (And I hope you get both.)

DIANNE: It’s not impossible to read these books out of order, but readers will probably enjoy the series a lot more if they start with Book 1. The re-hashing thing gave me some trouble when I started drafting Book 2, but I thought I had a clever way to do it. In chapter one, I introduced a new POV character, 12-year-old Dorian Ambrose who, as a member of the nefarious Dulac clan, watches his father interrogate a prisoner about the events that occurred in the climax of Book 1. Doing the recap as a prisoner interrogation? Brilliant, right? My beta readers hated me starting the book this way. HATED IT. But they couldn’t articulate a reason why it didn’t work for them, so I ignored them and sent it to my editor anyway. My editor, being truly brilliant, explained why this didn’t work as an opening. If readers didn’t remember who the Dulacs were and what threat they posed to our heroes, the tension and significance of the scene would be lost. She convinced me that I needed to start the book with my protagonist, Jax, and make sure the reader was re-acquainted with all the characters before throwing the villains at them. She was right, of course, and I wrote a new first chapter that hopefully will serve as that quick re-hash and still keep the reader interested.

The prisoner interrogation comes in chapter two. ;)

ME:  Do you already have a long list of plot ideas for future installments, or do you prefer to operate with more of a one-book-at-a-time mentality?

DIANNE: When HarperCollins signed me for a 3-book contract (with two more optioned books), my editor asked me to plan a 5-book story arc that could end on Book 3 if they decided not to pick up the options.  At that point, I planned out a premise for each of the 5 books.  But I didn’t develop a plot for each one until it was time to write it.

ME:  Are any of your beta readers youngsters? If so, is their input helpful?

DIANNE: My youngest daughter served as the #1 reader for The Eighth Day when I was writing the first draft. (I recall printing out my latest chapter one day, walking into the next room to pick up the pages and discovering they were already gone. She’d been standing next to the printer to collect them as they came out!) Of course, she was 12 back then. Now that she’s 14, she’s far too busy with her social life to read Mom’s work!  However, I still had other young beta readers. Lenny Lee, blogger extraordinaire, read the first and second books, and of course I had my fifth grade students.  Their feedback was immeasurably helpful! I will miss them now that I’m retired.

ME:  I'm way outside the parameters of the target age for your books, but I thoroughly enjoy them. I don't know if that's because you do such a good job tapping into the imagination of my inner child, or if it's something else. I mean, the most successful animated children's films also incorporate some language and humor directed at an adult audience. Is any of that in play in your books? Do you consciously try to appeal to an adult audience, as well?

DIANNE: I do try to appeal to adults, especially by adding a self-aware wink and a nod here and there. A number of adult readers commented that they enjoyed how Jax, the first time he experiences the un-populated eighth day, assumes it’s the zombie apocalypse and stocks up on survival gear just like he’s seen people do on TV. Jax asks his guardian if they (the people who experience the eighth day) are human, and Riley answers: “Of course we’re human! What kind of bad science fiction movies have you been watching?” When Jax learns about his connection to people in Arthurian legends, he does what any of us would do: Googles his famous ancestor – only to find out he was “kind of a jerk.” And anyone who has ever lived with a teenage boy has mentioned to me how much they laughed at Jax and Riley blaming each other for why they were constantly running out of groceries. I guess it’s no coincidence that these are some of my favorite parts of the book too. I’m also way outside the target age!

ME:  What's next for you? Is your focus going to be on writing more Eighth Day books, or do you have another series or more stand-alone books on the horizon?

DIANNE: I recently revised a YA historical mystery that I wrote several years ago and also wrote a brand new kids’ science fiction adventure. Both of these will go to my agent for consideration, and I hope she’ll decide they’re worthy of submission to publishers. In the spring of 2105 I’ll need to expand the premise I have for the optioned Eighth Day books into something resembling a synopsis to submit for consideration.

I also have a few more ideas germinating (2 Middle Grade and 1 Young Adult) that might need that 18-month germination period before they blossom into full plots ready to be drafted.

Publication of any of these books is not guaranteed. Even with two prior YA historicals and this 3-book fantasy series under my belt, every work I write has to go through the same submission process as my first book. Sometimes, the answer will be “no.” All I can do is write as many as I can and hope that some of them get a big “YES!”

ME:  Anything else you'd like to share with us?

DIANNE: Just that I’m ridiculously excited for this release. The Inquisitor’s Mark was probably my favorite book to write in the series so far – and my favorite scenes involve a chase through the Central Park Zoo, a garbage chute and a fire escape ladder, and a monster under a luxury Manhattan apartment building!

***

Plot Summary for The Inquisitor’s Mark:

After the all-out Eighth Day war in Mexico, Jax, Riley, and Evangeline have gone into hiding. There are still rogue Transitioners and evil Kin lords who want to use Riley, a descendant of King Arthur, and Evangeline, a powerful wizard with bloodlines to Merlin, to get control over the Eighth Day.

So when Finn Ambrose, a mysterious stranger, contacts Jax claiming to be his uncle, Jax’s defenses go up—especially when Finn tells Jax that he’s holding Jax’s best friend, Billy, hostage. To rescue Billy and keep Riley and Evangeline out of the fray, Jax sneaks off to New York City on his own. But once there, he discovers a surprising truth: Finn is his uncle and Jax is closely related to the Dulacs—a notoriously corrupt and dangerous Transitioner clan who want Riley dead and Evangeline as their prisoner. And family or not, these people will stop at nothing to get what they want.

****
Thanks, Dianne. I hope you sell a bazillion copies, and kids are lined up outside the book stores to get a copy.

Wow, I'm ridiculously excited about Dianne's new release, too. She isn't just a terrific writer; she's a terrific person. With a great imagination. (Did I happen to mention that?) And now... I hope you're excited about her books, too. 

                               Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Things are definitely looking up. [Morguefile}

P.S. While I have you looking up, how about looking into a nest... an eagle's nest... with two adorable babies in it? This eagle cam is set up in the Fort Myers. Florida area. Really cool

A Praiseworthy Personality

Thought for the day:  Cities are not people. But like people, cities have their own personalities... [Neil Gaimon]

Do you think that's true? Does your town... or another town you know... have a distinct personality? Has it remained fairly constant over the years?

The smallish town where we live in Georgia re-branded itself a few years ago, so now its motto is a place to imagine. Kinda nice, even if I don't know exactly what the heck it's supposed to mean. Nonetheless, we've been here since 1971, and it's always been a great place to live, whether I imagined it or not.

        Our town has a bunch of beautiful old homes with sprawling wrap-around porches...

Gorgeous, aren't they? Not that we live in one of them. Then again, we don't have to pay to keep one of those high-ceiling beauties warm in the winter or cool in the middle of summer's sizzle, either. Our modest ranch house suits us just fine.

Downtown has a mixture of quaint shops, old businesses, and restaurants. The shop with the dark green awning is Taste of Britain, a veritable treasure trove of British teas, foods, and collectibles. The owners also host an annual British Fayre car show, accompanied by some great music. Even a wandering bagpiper! Across the street is the old historic train depot, which was transformed into a popular restaurant about a decade ago. Considering how small the downtown area is, there are quite a few restaurants, including an outstanding pub, two Italian eateries, and a Cuban American restaurant boasting the best mojitas in all of greater Atlanta.

Our little town has lots of things going for it, like lots of street festivals, a couple other car shows, a community theater, home tours, carriage rides, and some pretty interesting community art projects. Like earlier this year...  many of the trees throughout the city were painted ... blue.

And in another project, the town was yarn bombed. Colorful crocheted and knitted pieces decorated trees, fences, signs, and light posts. These pictures of yarn-bombed trees are especially for you, Elephant's Child. I hope you like them...

                                     Oh, wait! Wait! I have to show you our frogs, too!

Pretty neat, huh? Whimsical. Yeah, whimsical. I guess that's why I like them so much. So, yeah, I'd have to say our town definitely has a personality. It's ever-changing, but it's never-boring. And in spite of its diversity, if it were represented by a flavor, it wouldn't be mojitas. Nope, not at all. It'd be sweet tea.

On Friday, we're gonna take a look at my old home town... Baltimore. Trust me, it has personality... and spice... out the wazoo. Happy Fourth of July, y'all! I hope you have a bang up time.

[Ooops, didja know a pre-scheduled post will only go live at the proper time if ya remember to set the darned time right? 12:34]

                                  Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

If our town had a scent, it would be magnolias.

Never Too Old to Play

Thought for the day:  It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.  [Margaret Mead]

We can never be young again, but doggone it, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy our second childhood. As many a psychiatrist has said, it's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to us.

Even the ol' pessimist Fredrich Nietzsche said, In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

And Plato said, Life must be lived as play.

Jeez Louise, who are we to argue with those guys? I mean, they were two seriously smart dudes.

So play we must.

Let's investigate our capacity for fun, shall we? Do you have any toys left from your childhood? I only have a few.

It was pretty much the standard in our extended family to pass toys around. Whatever toys I received from my older cousins, I'd later pass on to the younger ones, so I was really surprised to come across this little china tea cup in my parents' house when we were cleaning it out after my father died. As far as I know, it's the only piece remaining from the tea set I played with as a little girl. I don't exactly play with it anymore, but it makes me smile every time I look at it.

This is the only original toy I've kept in my possession since childhood. My aunt made the pouch in about 1954 or so, and my ball and jacks have resided in it ever since. At one time, some of the jacks were brightly colored, others were shiny, and the ball actually bounced. (Now the ball kinda goes THUD.)

These little China dolls were sent to me in the late '50s by military friends who were stationed in Japan. The dolls sat on display  in my mother's china cabinet for years, and over time, the elastic bands holding the arms and legs gave up the ghost. About twenty-five years ago, my father replaced the bands, and my parents sent the dolls to me as a Christmas surprise.














Okay, second question: Since you've been an adult, have you ever bought a toy for yourself?

I did.

What can I say?

I fell in love with Alf.








Okay, here's another one for you. Have you ever bought a toy for your child or grandchild because you wanted to play with it? Boy, oh, boy, have I ever! I could hardly wait for my kids to be old enough to play Stratego, to build models, and to create magic with an erector set. Reading my favorite children's books to my kids and grandkids is even more enjoyable than it was when I read them for the first time as a child.

Does anybody still buy you toys?

Smarticus and I usually give each other fun little gadgets to play with, because we're both overgrown kids at heart. But my favorite... my absolute favorite toy he ever got me is this:

Can you believe it???? It's a genuine original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Bubble Bomber!!! Woo HOO!

Every time I saw the commercial for this toy on TV, I went nuts for it. Kept telling my hubby how I wished our kids were younger so we could buy it for them. (Right.) And ta-DA, he gave it to me for my birthday! (Can that man take a hint, or what???)

It is the coolest thing ever! You put in soap solution and a little bit of cooking oil, which warms up, so when you release a bubble bomb, it's filled with smoke. The bubble hits the ground, goes POP, and out comes the smoke. It's probably been close to thirty years since he gave it to me, and I still love it. It is still the coolest toy ever. (One of these days, I suppose I should let the grandchildren play with it...)

                                                    Okay, one last one to show you.

Isn't he adorable? When you squeeze his belly, he wolf whistles, and says, "I go bananas over you."

                                              Your turn. Tell me about your toys.

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.  [Pablo Neruda]

[source: seniorark.com]

Oh yeah, I've got a really neat jump rope, too, and a couple hula hoops. Last time I jumped rope with some of the grandkids, I fell on my arse. I thought it was hysterical, but my son and husband were mortified. Said I couldn't play anymore.

Think that'll stop me from playing next time ...?


Oh, no, no, no. I'll just be more cautious.

                                    Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

                                                I will not play tug o' war.
                                                I'd rather play hug o' war.
                                               Where everyone hugs instead of tugs,
                                               Where everyone giggles and rolls on the rug,
                                               Where everyone kisses and everyone grins,
                                               And everyone cuddles, and everyone wins.
                                                             [Shel Silverstein]

Brainiacs Just Wanta Have Fun

Thought for the day:  Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.  [Albert Einstein]

Some people believe science is boring, and think scientists have no sense of humor. Not me.

Most people are aware of the brilliance of Einstein's mind, but didja know he was also very witty? After all, he didn't just delve into relativity and declare that E=MC2. He also said,

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty woman is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.  

Yep, the same imagination and curiosity that leads people to pursue scientific endeavors very often fuels a keen sense of humor, as well. And nothing supports this notion better than the Ig Nobel awards.

Remember them?

Ig Nobel's official mascot, The Stinker

I wrote about 'em last year. If you missed that post, you can find it here

Or, I can simply do a quick recap.

These annual awards, whose purpose is to first make people laugh, and then to make them think, are the brainchild of Marc Abraham, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research.  Ten awards are presented each year at an irreverent ceremony held at Harvard University's Sanders Hall, and although the tongue-in-cheek event is full of hilarity, satire, and tossed paper airplanes, some of the seemingly trivial research highlighted there can and does lead to important discoveries. For example, the 2006 award in Biology went to scientists who discovered some malaria-causing mosquitoes are just as attracted to limburger cheese as they are to human feet. Yeah, I've known some people whose feet smell like stinky cheese, too, so this study is worthy of a snicker or two, but the study also led to mosquito traps being baited with limburger cheese to help combat malaria.

The essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. [Jacob Bronowski]

Scientists from all over the world gathered last week for this year's 22nd annual ceremony, and as always, the awards were presented by world-reknown Nobel laureates. As a point of interest, see that frog in the picture? He's alive, and he's being levitated magnetically. Cool, huh? In 2000, that unusual research into frog levitation earned Andre Geim and Sir Michael Berry an Ig Nobel in Physics. Ten years later, Geim won an honest-to-goodness Nobel prize in Physics for his work on graphene. He's the first to win both an Ig and a Nobel, but I doubt he'll be the last.





Facts are the air of scientists. Without them,  you can never fly.  [Linus Pauling]

Without further ado, I present to you (ta-DA!) the 2012 Ig Nobel winners:

 PSYCHOLOGY-  A team of scientists from the Netherlands and Peru won for their research, entitled Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller.















PEACE- This one went to Russian SKN Company for converting old Russian ammunition into nano-diamonds. (WOW! That's even better than turning swords into ploughs!)

ACOUSTICS- Ever been in a meeting or presentation where you wished someone would Just. Stop. Talking? Two Japanese researchers came up with the perfect solution. Their machine, called a Speech Jammer, disrupts a person's speech by enabling him to hear his own time-delayed voice. The speaker is so discombobulated by the effect, He. Just. Shuts. Up.

Basic research is like shooting an arrow into the air and where it lands, painting a target.  [Homer Adkins]

NEUROSCIENCE- A U.S. team showed that if brain researchers used the right statistical tricks, they could measure meaningful brain activity just about anywhere ... even in dead fish.














CHEMISTRY- This award went to a team who discovered why the hair of blondes living in a certain Swedish town turned green.

LITERATURE- Although no one showed up at the ceremony to accept this particular prize, (Gee, I wonder why?) it was awarded to the U.S. Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends (you guessed it!) the preparation of another report about the reports about reports.

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.  [Mark Twain]

PHYSICS- Ever wonder why, when a woman with a ponytail jogs, essentially an up-and-down motion, her ponytail swings from side to side? A team of U.S. and British researchers won a prize for exploring the forces governing the shape and movement in a human ponytail.

Nothing can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.  [Howard Nemerov]










FLUID DYNAMICS- This award went to a U.S. team who studied the dynamics of sloshing. Specifically, exactly what causes your cup of coffee to slop over when you carry it? (Other than clumsiness, that is.)

ANATOMY- Researchers from the Netherlands and the U.S. pooled resources to discover chimpanzees can identify other chimps from pictures. Not just ANY pictures, mind you, but pictures of their backsides. HUH! I don't know why that should come as such a surprise. Some men are like that, too. I mean ...

The world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle, wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.  [Thomas Carlyle]

MEDICINE- The tenth, and final award, went to French scientists, who came up with a way to reduce the risk of causing an explosion while performing a colonoscopy. Really? I mean, REALLY??? (I always wondered why a hazmat team stood by when I was having those procedures ...)

Marc Abraham ended this year's ceremony just as he has every year ... by saying, If you didn't win an Ig Nobel prize this year--- and especially if you did--- better luck next time.

Wanta hear a little more about these awards? Take it away, Mr. Abraham! (And, yeah, that IS a brassiere he's holding ...)

                      When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction.  [Steven Wright]

                                                              Me, too.

                             Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.