Read about this one on Paul Krugman's blog, Intellectual Sex Toys for the Brilliant but Misunderstood amongst us...
Dr. Elena N. Bodnar couldn't be more serious about her research. The trauma and risk management specialist was in her native Ukraine during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and helped children cope with its aftermath. Tonight, as she accepts the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize for public health, she won't mind laughter when she demonstrates "in a very elegant way, without removing any clothes," how an ordinary brassiere can be transformed into a pair of gas masks."I think the Ig Nobel is not just a funny thing," she said in an interview this afternoon. "If it makes people first laugh and then think, my discovery fits perfectly."
I think the laugh, then think mantra is something that as a Defeatist, I can completely endorse. Unfortunately, most either don't think or think, then laugh. Or, we laugh bitterly and think about how it was all supposed to work. And didn't -- here is Professor Krugman's contribution to the festivities which he explains, demonstrates and gets the accounting wrong.
24: Given decentralized constrained optimization by maximizing agents with well-defined convex objective functions and/or convex production functions, engaging in exchange and production with free disposal, leads, in the absence of externalities, market power, and other distortions, there exists an equilibrium characterized by Pareto optimality.
7:Greedy people, competing, make the world go round.
Hmm, very interesing, thanks
Posted by: Sildenafil | 07 November 2009 at 01:43 AM