I once saw a pigeon on the subway
get off at the financial district, and all
I could think was, That bird makes
more money than me.
—Jonny Sun, comedian“Ever have one of
those days when
you feel everyone is
out to get you?”
She smiled and
replied, “I take
medication for
that.”
—Sarah Pennisi
Beamsville, OntarioA cheat sheet for
deciphering your
performance review:
✦“Good communi-
cator” = Needs to stop
e-mailing me
✦“Creative problem
solver” = Creates a lot
of problems
✦“Collaborative” =
Gets other people to
do his work
✦“Passionate” =
Always interrupting
me
✦“Excellent time-
management skills” =
Uses meetings to
check e-mail
✦“Punctual” = Leaves
every day at five
✦“Results-driven” =
Will throw you under
the bus
—how to be successful without
hurting men’s feelings by sarah
cooper (andrews mcmeel)“THE NUTTY-PROFESSOR AWARD GOES TO ...”
The Ig Nobel Prize is a tongue-in-cheek award given
each year to actual research projects that seem—well,
silly. The winners are published in a humorous periodi-
cal, Annals of Improbable Research.
economics Researchers
in Canada and the
United States, for
investigating whether
it is effective for
employees to use
voodoo dolls to
retaliate against
abusive bosses.
(Their finding:
It is!)
biology Research-
ers in Sweden,
Colombia, and
Germany, for
demonstrating
that wine experts
can reliably iden-
tify, by smell, the pres-
ence of a single fly in a
glass of wine.
chemistry Three Portu-
guese researchers, formeasuring the degree
to which human saliva is
a good cleaning agent for
dirty surfaces.
peace Researchers in
Spain, for measur-
ing the frequency,
motivation, and
effects of shouting
and cursing while
driving an
automobile.
nutrition A lec-
turer at England’s
University of
Brighton, for
calculating that the
caloric intake from a
human-cannibalism diet
is significantly lower than
the caloric intake from
most other traditional
meat diets.Reader’s Digestrd.com 81gresei/shutterstock (peanut). jiri vaclayek/shutterstock (glasses)