Date: Thu, 5 Oct 95 00:35:12 -0400
From: marca@wilson.harvard.edu (Marc Abrahams)
Message-Id: <9510050435.AA08110@wilson.harvard.edu>
To: BOURBAKI@NEU.EDU
Subject: Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Will be Televised Live on the Internet

                               PLEASE FORWARD/POST AS APPROPRIATE
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Ig Nobel Ceremony to Be Televised Live Oct 6
============================================

This year's Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will be televised live over the
Internet.  

Tickets for the 1995 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, to be held at Harvard 
University, are already sold out.  But at the last possible moment, 
a valiant band of scientists and technicians have made it possible for you 
to see the ceremony in a live, cheesy, one-frame-a-second videocast.

Anyone, anywhere in the world, whose system has the capability to 
receive MBONE broadcasts can tune in beginning at 7:15 pm (Boston time) 
on Friday, Oct 6 to be part of this technological miracle.
We will put skimpy technical details on our automatic information 
server <info@improb.com> as soon as they are available.
 
If you do not know how to access an MBONE broadcast, please do not
ask us (we barely understand it ourselves).  Rather, seek out a friend
who does!

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Have Your Own Ig Party
======================
We are encourage anyone who can receive the broadcast to post notices 
inviting your neighbors to come and (a) admire your nifty computer
equipment and (b) bring beer and chips and paper airplanes and watch
the Ig.

========
Our Hero
========
The technical presence behind the broadcast is Robert T. Morris 
(intrepid AIR Editorial Board member) whose worm program 
shut down the Internet a few years ago.  RTM assures us that the
Ig broadcast will be sent to Internet sites worldwide.

====================
Hoopla and Goings On
====================
Ten Ig Nobel Prizes will be awarded.  Five genuine Nobel Laureates
will be a-leaping, handing out the Prizes and also dancing in the
world premiere of "The Interpretive Dance of the Nucleotides."
Tom and Ray of Car Talk will deliver a 30-second Heisenberg Certainty
Lecture, as will Sally Yeh, President of Bijan Fragrances of Beverly
Hills (creators of DNA Fragrances), and three other improbably
glmorous and intelligent people.

====================================================
Seize the Technocalifragilisticexpialidocious Moment
====================================================
If you are in Cambridge and don't have your own magnificent MBONE viewing
facility, come join the gathering crowd at the Harvard Science Center.
It's free.  It starts at 7:15 pm Friday, Oct 16. It will be a great moment
in the history of technology.  You and hundreds of other cutting edge
with-it hip futuristic folks watching a projected image of the Ig Nobel
Prize Ceremony that has been instantaneously digitized, transmitted around 
the world on the prestigious Internet, downloaded, converted to an NTSC
signal, fed to a video projector, and thrown onto a somewhat big screen,
clunking away at one frame per second with grainy images and murky sound.
We have met the future and he am us.
No matter.  Come to the Science Center.  It's free, and it could 
conceivably be fun, maybe.

===
Why
===
Why are we announcing this so late?  Because the ethernet cable
into Lowell Lecture Hall just got installed today, that's why.

================
Details, Details
================
For the most up-to-date information about the Ig Nobel Prize
Ceremony, send a message to  <info@improb.com>
It would be good for you to check the message there on Friday
just before you set out on your epic journey to the Ig cheesy
reception& viewing site; in the unlikely (ha) event that gremlins
impede the transmission, we will announce the disaster there.

See you at the Ig!

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