geekosystem

Yesterday marked the ceremony awarding the 22nd batch of Ig Nobel Prizes for the goofiest, strangest, and altogether most fun inventions, studies and pieces of scientific research of the last year. The awards were presented at Harvard University by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research to 10 researchers whose work ranged from developing the SpeechJammer, a device that disrupts a person's speech patterns by playing their own voice back to them on a slight delay, to research into why coffee spills when you're walking with it. Keep reading for video of the entire awards ceremony.

The United States has issued a patent for the "Easy Inter Burial Chamber," a device that can only be described as a screw-in coffin. The patent description also mentions the device's utility for the storage of things other than human remains, like water, food, or fuel; it can be sealed tight and buried discreetly in such a way that it is unlikely to be found by a person who does not know exactly where it is. Well, sure, but this isn't Fallout and nobody's afraid of Y2K anymore, so what we're looking at here, sir, is a drill-bit-shaped coffin. Just wanted to get that straight.