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Rats in tiny trousers, pseudoscientific bullshit, the personalities of rocks, and Volkswagen’s, shall we say, “creative” approach to emissions testing were among the research topics honored by the 2016 Ig Nobel Prizes. The winners were announced last night at a live webcast ceremony held at Harvard University.
穿著小褲子的老鼠、偽科學胡扯、石頭的個性和大眾在尾氣排放測試中富有創造性的方法，這些都是2016搞笑諾貝爾獎的得獎研究課題。昨晚，在哈佛大學舉行的網上直播儀式中，搞笑諾貝爾獎的得主一一揭開了神祕的面紗。
注：對於那些不熟悉搞笑諾貝爾獎的人，我們只能說它是一個為妙趣科學舉辦的`年度慶典。或者說是慶祝那些看似可疑的科學，由諷刺雜誌《不可思議研究年報》提供。它的主要目標是表彰那些一開始讓你大笑接著令你深思的研究。它們都非常有趣，大獎得主們常常需要自費前往慶典接受他們的獎項。
This year’s crop of Ig Nobel Laureates is listed below. Those who attended the ceremony were given just 60 seconds for their acceptance speeches, a longstanding rule that was, as always, vigorously enforced (the Oscars could learn a thing or two from the Ig Nobels).
今年的搞笑諾貝爾名單如下。那些參加慶典的人只有60秒的提名演講時間，這個長期以來存在的規則常常會被大力貫徹下去(奧斯卡也應該從搞笑諾貝爾獎中學到一兩樣東西)。
Reproduction Prize: The late Ahmed Shafik, for studying the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats, and for conducting similar tests with human males.
生殖學獎：已故的Ahmed Shafik，研究穿聚酯、棉或者羊毛面料的褲子對老鼠性生活的影響，類似的實驗也在人類男性身上實施過。
Economics Prize: Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes, and Shelagh Ferguson, forassessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective.
經濟學獎：Mark Avis、Sarah Forbes和Shelagh Ferguson，從銷售和營銷視角評估石頭的個性。
Physics Prize: Gábor Horváth, Miklós Blahó, György Kriska, Ramón Hegedüs, Balázs Gerics, Róbert Farkas, Susanne Åkesson, Péter Malik, and Hansruedi Wildermuth, for discovering why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses, and for discovering why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones.
物理學獎：Gábor Horváth、Miklós Blahó、György Kriska、Ramón Hegedüs、Balázs Gerics、Róbert Farkas、Susanne Åkesson、Péter Malik和Hansruedi Wildermuth，他們發現白馬最不招馬蠅的原因以及為何蜻蜓會受到黑色墓碑的致命吸引。
Medicine Prize: Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas Münte, Silke Anders, and Andreas Sprenger, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa).
醫學獎：Christoph Helmchen、Carina Palzer、Thomas Münte、Silke Anders和Andreas Sprenger，他們發現如果你的身體左側很癢，那麼看著鏡子撓身體右側就能緩解症狀(反之亦然)。
Biology Prize: Awarded jointly to: Charles Foster, for living in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird; and to Thomas Thwaites, for creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming hills in the company of, goats.
生物學獎：共同頒發給——於不同時間在野外像獾、水獺、鹿、狐狸和鳥那樣生活的Charles Foster，以及在四肢創造假體擴張使得他能像山羊那樣移動的Thomas Thwaites。
Psychology Prize: Verschuere, for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers.
心理學獎： Verschuere，調查了一千名說謊者的說謊頻率，並決定何時該相信他們的答案。
Peace Prize: Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek Koehler, and Jonathan Fugelsang for their scholarly study called “On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit.”
和平獎：Gordon Pennycook、James Allan Cheyne、Nathaniel Barr、Derek Koehler和Jonathan Fugelsang，得獎研究是“接受和檢測假裝深沉的狗屎言論”。
Literature Prize: Fredrik Sjöberg, for his three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead.
文學獎：Fredrik Sjöberg，他寫了三本自傳體作品，講述了收集死蒼蠅和尚未死去蒼蠅的樂趣。
Perception Prize: Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei Adachi, for investigating whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs.
認知學獎：Atsuki Higashiyama 和 Kohei Adachi，他們調查了當你彎下腰從兩腿之間看事物的時候，它們是否會變得不一樣。
part 2The striving of countries in Central Europe to enter the European Union may offer an unprecedented chance to the continent’s Gypsies (or Roman) to be recognized as a nation, albeit one without a defined territory. And if they were to achieve that they might even seek some kind of formal place-at least a total population outnumbers that of many of the Union’s present and future countries. Some experts put the figure at 4m-plus; some proponents of Gypsy rights go as high as 15m.
Unlike Jews, Gypsies have had no known ancestral land to hark back to. Though their language is related to Hindi, their territorial origins are misty. Romanian peasants held them to be born on the moon. Other Europeans (wrongly) thought them migrant Egyptians, hence the derivative Gypsy. Most probably they were itinerant metal workers and entertainers who drifted west from India in the 7th century.
However, since communism in Central Europe collapsed a decade ago, the notion of Romanestan as a landless nation founded on Gypsy culture has gained ground. The International Romany Union, which says it stands for 10m Gypsies in more than 30 countries, is fostering the idea of “self-rallying”. It is trying to promote a standard and written form of the language; it waves a Gypsy flag (green with a wheel) when it lobbies in such places as the United Bations; and in July it held a congress in Prague, The Czech capital. Where President Vaclav Havel said that Gypsies in his own country and elsewhere should have a better deal.
At the congress a Slovak-born lawyer, Emil Scuka, was elected president of the International Tomany Union. Later this month a group of elected Gypsy politicians, including members of parliament, mayors and local councilors from all over Europe (OSCE), to discuss how to persuade more Gypsies to get involved in politics.
The International Romany Union is probably the most representative of the outfits that speak for Gypsies, but that is not saying a lot. Of the several hundred delegates who gathered at its congress, few were democratically elected; oddly, none came from Hungary, whose Gypsies are perhaps the world’s best organized, with some 450 Gypsy bodies advising local councils there. The union did, however, announce its ambition to set up a parliament, but how it would actually be elected was left undecided.
So far, the European Commission is wary of encouraging Gypsies to present themselves as a nation. The might, it is feared, open a Pandora’s box already containing Basques, Corsicans and other awkward peoples. Besides, acknowledging Gypsies as a nation might backfire, just when several countries, particularly Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, are beginning to treat them better, in order to qualify for EU membership. “The EU’s whole premise is to overcome differences, not to highlight them,” says a nervous Eurocrat.
But the idea that the Gypsies should win some kind of special recognition as Europe’s largest continent wide minority, and one with a terrible history of persecution, is catching on . Gypsies have suffered many pogroms over the centuries. In Romania, the country that still has the largest number of them (more than 1m), in the 19th century they were actually enslaved. Hitler tried to wipe them out, along with the Jews.
“Gypsies deserve some space within European structures,” says Jan Marinus Wiersma, a Dutchman in the European Parliament who suggests that one of the current commissioners should be responsible for Gypsy affairs. Some prominent Gypsies say they should be more directly represented, perhaps with a quota in the European Parliament. That, they argue, might give them a boost. There are moves afoot to help them to get money for, among other things, a Gypsy university.
One big snag is that Europe’s Gypsies are, in fact, extremely heterogeneous. They belong to many different, and often antagonistic, clans and tribes, with no common language or religion, Their self-proclaimed leaders have often proved quarrelsome and corrupt. Still, says, Dimitrina Petrova, head of the European Roma Rights Center in Budapest, Gypsies’ shared experience of suffering entitles them to talk of one nation; their potential unity, she says, stems from “being regarded as sub-human by most majorities in Europe.”
And they have begun to be a bit more pragmatic. In Slovakia and Bulgaria, for instance, Gypsy political parties are trying to form electoral blocks that could win seats in parliament. In Macedonia, a Gypsy party already has some-and even runs a municipality. Nicholas Gheorge, an expert on Gypsy affairs at the OSCE, reckons that, spread over Central Europe, there are now about 20 Gypsy MPS and mayors, 400-odd local councilors, and a growing number of businessmen and intellectuals.
That is far from saying that they have the people or the cash to forge a nation. But, with the Gypsy question on the EU’s agenda in Central Europe, they are making ground.
