The Ig Nobel prizes for 2021 were awarded in a virtual ceremony Thursday night by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. The awards honor and highlight research that may look ridiculous on the surface, but almost always has some underlying purpose in advancing the field of science. In other words, "Research that makes people laugh and then think." We can't all get grants to develop life-saving drugs, after all. The winners this year range from checking out how orgasms may clear one's sinuses to an analysis of movie theater smells to correlating a nation's level of corruption with the obesity of its politicians. Researchers from the US won two awards (but also collaborated on others): one on controlling cockroaches on submarines and the other on whether humans developed beards to avoid being punched in the face. Continue reading for the full list of winners and their research papers.

Game development is difficult. It’s a long and tedious process, and there are some cases where the games that developers pour their heart and soul into won’t even be put on the shelves for consumption. For Fast Company tech editor Harry McCracken however, things were a little different. The once teenage TRS-80 enthusiast and hobbyist created a text adventure called Arctic Adventure published in The Captain ‘80 Book of Basic Adventures. His game got published, which was great! Unfortunately, the code was broken. McCracken only took 40 years to find and fix the error: 

Having never received a copy of the book his code was published in and not having kept a copy of the code for himself, McCracken spent the next four decades or so doing non-Arctic Adventure related things.

Thanks to internet archivists, however, he recently acquired a copy of The Captain ‘80 Book of Basic Adventures, and with the help of a TRS-80 emulator for his iPad, managed to type in his code and get the game up and running. Only it wasn’t quite running.

After five or six tedious typing sessions on my iPad, I had Arctic Adventure restored to digital form. That was when I made an alarming discovery: As printed in the Captain ‘80 book, the game wasn’t just unwinnable but unplayable. It turned out that it had a 1981 typo that consisted of a single missing “0" in a character string. It was so fundamental a glitch that it rendered the game’s command of the English language inoperable. You couldn’t GET SHOVEL, let alone complete the adventure (The object is to get back to your base).

McCracken has no idea how the typo occurred. Maybe it was something he did that the book editors didn’t catch. Maybe it was a printing error. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter now. Arctic Adventure is restored and playable in your web browser via a browser-based TRS-80 emulator on McCracken’s website.

Image credit: Harry McCracken

Researchers managed to finally determine the famous artist’s height. Well, an approximation at least. While his artworks are huge and gigantic (in terms of both impact and actual height), his stature can only compare. I’m short too, so that’s totally fine! A new study published in the September 2021 issue of the Anthropologie examined footwear believed to have belonged to Michelangelo. 

From the pair of leather shoes and a single leather slipper, researchers from the Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology, and Bioarchaeology Research Center in Italy determined that Michelangelo was five feet two inches tall: 

It’s worth pointing out, of course, that by the standards of his day—the 15th and 16th centuries—Michelangelo’s height would not have been out of the norm. And, according to the article’s authors, forensic anthropologist Elena Varotto and paleopathologist ​​Francesco Galassi, the measurement squares, roughly, with Giorgio Vasari’s own account of the artist in his indispensable series of Renaissance-era biographies The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550).

Vasari describes Michelangelo as being of “middle height, wide across the shoulders, but the rest of his body in good proportion.” He was a “very healthy man, thin and muscular,” Vasari wrote. 

Varotto and Galassi’s speculation is just that, though. Michelangelo’s remains, located at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, have never been exhumed and studied. There’s also the possibility that the three shoes belonged to a relative of Michelangelo’s rather than to the artist himself.

image credit: the Casa Buonarroti Museum

Can I finally play Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones on my Switch? Who knows! Nintendo is rumored to start providing GameBoy and Game Boy Color titles to the Nintendo Switch Online, its subscription service for the latest console. There are no specific number of new titles that will be added to the 100-plus NES and SNES games, as the Verge details: 

But it makes a lot of sense that Nintendo would ramp up more classic content, particularly now that the Switch is well into its life and Nintendo is watching its competitors capitalize on remakes, remasters and next-gen patches that make older games look better and give their new consoles some extra life.

For a while, we were wondering if Nintendo would continue going down the NES Classic and SNES Classic route, releasing cute limited-edition miniature USB versions of its Game Boy or Nintendo 64 with preloaded games on board, too. But the Game Boy’s 30th anniversary came and went without a miniature Game Boy, and now we’re in the midst of a global chip shortage. I’d love to see more opportunities to let new gamers in on old classics, and not just in terms of remakes like Link’s Awakening (originally on Game Boy, Game Boy Color).

Here’s hoping for Game Boy Advance, too, because folks playing the new Metroid Dread deserve to play its amazing prequel Metroid Fusion, and some of the best Fire Emblem games ever made came out there. Oh, and Golden Sun. Eurogamer does say other consoles beyond Game Boy and Game Boy Color may be “on the cards.”

Amusingly, Nintendo offered this official statement: “We have nothing to announce on this topic.”

Image credit: Ravi Palwe

Paleontologist Lisa Buckley is fascinated with birds. So in addition to her scientific research, she applies makeup to match the fashions of the world's most beautiful birds. Buckley calls her art "Bird Glamour".

When an artist renders three-dimensional objects in two dimensions, they normally give it perspective, so that it appears realistic to the eye. However, since the two-dimensional medium (a computer screen or a canvas) has no depth, you can mess around with the perspective part and really have fun. M.C. Escher was a master at such shenanigans. His use of confusing perspective inspired Macedonian artist Fleta Selmani to create the font she calls Impossible Type. Letters are three-dimensional, but their perspective defies reality.

The font is not difficult to read, as our brains perceive basic shapes in total at the speed we read, but if you stop and look closely at the letters, they are mind-bending. You can purchase and download Impossible Type (upper case, numbers, and punctuation) here.

-via Kottke

When you see a flock of birds fly up in the sky, have you ever wondered how they know where they are going? If humans have difficulty in navigating short distances on foot, what more if they were on air and without the aid of technology? The lack of technological assistance makes bird flight much more interesting. AmazeLab looks into the avian’s sky navigation and the established explanation for their flight. 

-via Flipboard 

Image credit: Alvaro Pinot

Benjamin was the last thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, in captivity and as far as we know, the last thylacine in existence. He died in 1936, and the species has been considered extinct since then. Now all that's left are some lifeless anatomical specimens and a few photos and film footage. We posted this video of Benjamin before, although it was quite a few years ago. But through the miracle of technology, it's been brought to life in color. The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) of Australia commissioned a restoration of the film with added color.

The NFSA created a 4K scan of the original 33-mm negative of a 77-second video, shot by naturalist David Fleay in 1933. This was then sent to Composite Films in Paris, where Samuel François-Steininger and his team recreated the creature’s color in painstaking detail.

Unfortunately, no true color photos or video of the thylacine exist, so the team studied specimens preserved in museum collections, consulted sketches, paintings, scientific drawings and written descriptions from the time, as well as more recent 3D renderings.

“Because of the resolution and quality of the picture, there were a lot of details – the fur was dense and a lot of hair had to be detailed and animated,” says François-Steininger. “From a technological point of view, we did everything digitally – combining digital restoration, rotoscoping and 2D animation, lighting, AI algorithms for the movement and the noise, compositing and digital grading. More than 200 hours of work were needed to achieve this result.”

To be honest, the realistic depiction of the thylacine only underscores how sad it is that they are extinct. -via Damn Interesting

Here's another clever yet dreadful mashup from the YouTuber known as There I Ruined It. He combined the classic Queen "Another One Bites the Dust" and laid it over the instrumentation of "Tequila" by The Champs. Since the song was necessary for the Pee-wee Herman dance, that's who stars in the video. -via reddit

Can you guess the metro area with the highest number of college degrees per capita in the United States? My first guess was Raleigh-Durham, but I was wrong. Not very wrong, however, because this list divides the metro areas differently, and both Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary did pretty well. As the joke goes, North Carolina's biggest exports are tobacco and college graduates, even though some of them stick around to contribute to the work of the Research Triangle. The most educated metro area is Ann Arbor, Michigan, where you'll find the University of Michigan. WalletHub compiled the statistics to come up with the educational rankings of the 150 biggest metro areas of the US. They crunched 11 metrics, including degree attainment, quality of local schools, and equity in race, gender, and economic status. The top 20 metro areas are:

1. Ann Arbor, MI
2. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
3. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
4. San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA
5. Madison, WI
6. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH
7. Durham-Chapel Hill, NC
8. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
9. Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX
10. Provo-Orem, UT
11. Raleigh-Cary, NC
12. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT
13. Colorado Springs, CO
14. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO
15. Trenton-Princeton, NJ
16. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA
17. Portland-South Portland, ME
18. Tallahassee, FL
19. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
20. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA

See the rankings of all 150 metro areas and top rankings in various categories, plus methodology and additional statistics at WalletHub. 

-via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Kit)

You don't have to be Indiana Jones to hunt treasure. If you're lucky enough, you don't even have to hunt for it! A crew of construction workers were renovating a mansion in France a couple of years ago and found a metal box embedded in a wall. It was full of gold coins- rather old ones, it seemed. That was on a Friday. The next Monday, the workers found another stash of coins, this time in a bag buried in a wall. François Mion and his wife, who purchased the mansion in 2012, were suddenly glad they decided to renovate and join the three buildings on the property.

After the 2019 find, Mion alerted the local authorities and later sent the treasures away to be studied and verified. Archaeologists determined that the coins were minted during the reigns of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, monarchs who ruled France from 1610 to 1643 and 1643 to 1715, respectively. The most recently minted coins were likely created during a series of money reforms that Louis XIV enacted to finance several costly wars. During his 72-year-long reign, Louis XIV also oversaw massive expansions to the Palace of Versailles.

Beginning in 2016, all treasures discovered in France automatically became property of the state. However, since the mansion owners purchased the property in 2012, they have the rights to sell their finds, reports France 3. Per French law, the proceeds from the sale will be split in half, with half going to the married couple who owns the property and half to be split evenly among the three discoverers.

You have to wonder how close the Mion family came to putting off renovations for a few years. The coins will go up for auction on September 29, and are expected to bring more than €250,000. Read the entire story at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Ivoire Auction House)

As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's natural to take a look at what has changed in the years since. Those horrific moments when we all watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse live on TV were particularly scarring. You have to wonder how safe such tall buildings really are, because those towers were a model of safe architecture in their day. It might be reassuring to know that we've come a long way in both design and materials since the World Trade Center was designed in the 1960s, and especially in the past twenty years since they fell. -via Digg

Just look at this photograph of the Amazon River! It looks like gold flowing through a darkened forest. It is not enhanced; the sunlight reflecting off the water among the darkened trees are due to the angle. This photo from taken from the International Space Station, by German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst in 2018. You can see how the river is much longer than the distance it travels through, as thousands of years of flowing water has formed meanders and even oxbow lakes where the meander has collapsed on itself over time. The Amazon is unique because of its size and the lack of engineering along its banks. A river that has dams, cities, and levees does not curl itself into nearly as many meanders. -via reddit

(Image credit: Flickr user Alexander Gerst)

So you've inherited your grandmother's precious dolls, which she cherished, but you can't stand them because they look so creepy. You aren't alone, as many people end up with dolls that are ugly, haunted, or give off uncanny valley vibes. You could toss them, but that's neither respectful to Grandma nor is it environmentally-friendly. What to do?

Sara and Brian have found their niche in recycling. They run a program called Unsettling Toy Removal and Rehoming, in which they take in your unwanted dolls and offer them to people who are not so bothered. If you're interested, you can look through the dolls that are available, or for a real horror show, see the permanent collection. 

Note: video may be NSFW due to the presence of a medical dummy named Maria.

-via Boing Boing

The 1995 teen comedy Clueless was a big hit and is now considered one of the best teen movies of all time. What? From the comments at YouTube, it's apparent that Clueless is cherished as a work of art by the Millennials who watched it as teens. However, if all you know about the film is what is in this Honest Trailer, that can be mystifying.