The the?
The 2007 Ig Noble prizes are out now, and while I am usually amused by them, this year I have a bit of a beef with one. From the MSNBC article
Best (and worst) of the rest
Other winners include:
* A Dutch researcher who conducted a census of all the creepy-crawlies that share our beds.
* Spanish scientists who found that rats sometimes could not distinguish between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch spoken backwards.
* An Australian woman who documented the indexing problems caused by the word "the."
* A Japanese researcher who extracted vanilla flavoring from cow dung.
* A Taiwanese man who patented a Batman-like device that drops a net over bank robbers.
Ok, as an indexing geek, I can tell you that the "The" problem really is a *big* deal. Seriously. Not something to be trivialized. Think about it...
Best (and worst) of the rest
Other winners include:
* A Dutch researcher who conducted a census of all the creepy-crawlies that share our beds.
* Spanish scientists who found that rats sometimes could not distinguish between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch spoken backwards.
* An Australian woman who documented the indexing problems caused by the word "the."
* A Japanese researcher who extracted vanilla flavoring from cow dung.
* A Taiwanese man who patented a Batman-like device that drops a net over bank robbers.
Ok, as an indexing geek, I can tell you that the "The" problem really is a *big* deal. Seriously. Not something to be trivialized. Think about it...