Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Ig Nobel Prizes for April Fools Day 2025, a holiday special

Happy April Fools Day! I promised a retrospective about holidays and I'll get to it, no fooling, but first I'm recycling last year's theme of IgNobel Prizes for April Fools Day/A> by sharing Anton Petrov describing Drunk Worms, Butt Breathing and More Hilarious Studies That Won Ig Nobel Prize In 2024.

Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about 10 exciting studies that won the Ig Nobel prize in 2024[.]
I agree with Anton; many of these are important studies, some of which may become stories I tell my students, at least for the next year or so I plan on teaching. The plant that mimics other plants, including plastic ones (Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees, anyone?), dead trout and salmon swimming, and butt-breathing mammals are facts I can share with my Organismal Biology students. I can even use the last today, as I'm lecturing on the respiratory system in Human Structure and Function after lecturing on the digestive system last week — a transition! My geology students flip coins for an extra credit exercise simulating radioactive decay, so the fair coin finding will be a good story to share with them. Finally, I show age structures comparing Bihar and Kerala, the states with the lowest and highest literacy in India, and point out how illiteracy affects Bihar's reported age structure. The demographic research casting doubt on extreme age might enhance that story.

I hope my readers enjoyed today's excursion into "achievements that first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK." All of them are real research. No hoaxes today!

Follow over the jump for a retrospective of the five most read posts about holidays during the 14th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.




The most read entry about holidays during the just-concluded blogging year was Contribute to Coffee Party USA on National Coffee Ice Cream Day, posted on September 6, 2018, so it's another top performer from the back catalog. It earned 405 default and 966 raw page views between March 21, 2024 and March 20, 2025 to rank eleventh by the first and fifth overall by the second. Like all entries from the back catalog, I'm attributing its popularity to web search. I also might mention it again in an entry about popular old posts.




The most popular entry about holidays actually posted during the 14th year of this blog was Company Man explains 'Walmart - Why They're Hated' for Black Friday/Buy Nothing Day from November 29, 2024, which earned 614 raw page views to rank ninth among entries posted during the blogging year and 13th overall. It earned 325 default and 327 raw page views during November 2024 from my normal social media sharing augmented by a large-follower account reposting it on Bluesky to rank fourth for the month. It then earned 200 default and 241 raw page views during December 2024 from Infidel753 sharing it at his blog and my sharing the link at the Citizen Connect/Coffee Party Facebook page to rank ninth during December 2024. Among the shares, it earned 527 default and 568 raw page views over two months. I will probably mention it again in an entry about the Retail Apocalypse.


Mark Rober's squirrel obstacle course for Wester and Squirrel Awareness Month from October 21, 2024 earned 513 raw page views to rank 15th among entries posted during the blogging year and 19th overall. It gained its page views by being shared at the Citizen Connect/Coffee Party Facebook page then by Infidel753 at his blog, which resulted in 418 default and 433 raw page views to rank third by all measures during October 2024.


ETA: April fools! Here's the real graph.


On August 20, 2024, I posted For World Mosquito Day, TED-Ed asks 'Ethical dilemma: Should we get rid of mosquitoes?' It earned 483 raw page views to rank 21st among entries posted during the blogging year and 25th overall. I shared it first at the Citizen Connect Facebook page during August, then Infidel linked to it during September, which resulted in 270 default and 291 raw page views to rank fifth during the latter month and 384 default and 422 raw page views over two months.

I conclude with a holiday entry I covered in 'SNL' mocks the Signal group chat in its cold open and Weekend Update.

'Trump' hijacks the Resurrection to sell Bibles on 'SNL' for Easter from March 31, 2024 earned 382 default and 474 raw page views during the 14th year of this blog to rank 14th by default page views, 23rd among entries posted during the 14th year of the blog, and 27th overall by raw page views. I shared the link at the Coffee Party USA/Citizen Connect Facebook page during April 2024, earning it 337 default and 382 raw page views to rank first by both measures during the month. Expect me to recycle this paragraph when I write a retrospective about holidays, probably on April Fools Day.
I have five more holiday entries to feature in a future post. In the meantime, stay tuned for Wayback Wednesday!

Previous posts in this series Previous retrospectives about holidays.
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