[time-nuts] Ig Nobel ceremonies & time

[Eric Scace]

I had the happy fortune to attend this year’s Ig Nobel award ceremonies, the agenda of which is found here <http://www.improbable.com/ig/2016/>. This was the 26th First Annual Ig Novel Prize Ceremony

This year’s program featured “time”, including:
a mini-opera “The Last Second”, whose plot involves a leap second that goes very wrong.
micro-lectures by:
Prof Jenny Hoffman, Harvard physics: “What is a Leap Second, and Why Do We Create Them?”
John Lowe (NIST, Boulder): “How Scientists Decide When to Create a Leap Second, and How We Do It”
Eric Maskin, Nobel laureate, economics: “The Kinds of Financial Mischief That Could Be Done During an Unannounced Extra Leap Second”
Each time the word “time” was mentioned, the cheerleading section of the audience groaned.

All the micro-lectures were excellent — and John Lowe especially so. You can listen to it, the opera, and all the rest of the ceremony, on the upcoming Nov 25 “Science Friday” program on public radio. Broadcast times here <http://www.sciencefriday.com/>. Or, if impatient, the entire ceremony is available on YouTube <https://youtu.be/J9Vp41OPLdo> now.

I now return you back to our usual programming… 

— Eric