PHYSICS: John Moonstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Ohio, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1925 — in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years.
LITERATURE: The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of monetary tall tales, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of super rich characters — General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Sherry Quay Lu, barrister Jon A. Mbeki Esq., and others — each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with any unbalanced person who assists them.
PEACE: Jerry Gersh and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University, in the U.K., for electrically monitoring the activity of the brain cells in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from film clips of George Bush’s speeches explaining “How War Will Bring World Peace.”
ECONOMICS: Gauri Kadoch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday.