I had the happy fortune to attend this year’s Ig Nobel award ceremonies, the 
agenda of which is found here <http://www.improbable.com/ig/2016/>. This was 
the 26th First Annual Ig Novel Prize Ceremony

This year’s program featured “time”, including:
a mini-opera “The Last Second”, whose plot involves a leap second that goes 
very wrong.
micro-lectures by:
Prof Jenny Hoffman, Harvard physics: “What is a Leap Second, and Why Do We 
Create Them?”
John Lowe (NIST, Boulder): “How Scientists Decide When to Create a Leap Second, 
and How We Do It”
Eric Maskin, Nobel laureate, economics: “The Kinds of Financial Mischief That 
Could Be Done During an Unannounced Extra Leap Second”
Each time the word “time” was mentioned, the cheerleading section of the 
audience groaned.

All the micro-lectures were excellent — and John Lowe especially so. You can 
listen to it, the opera, and all the rest of the ceremony, on the upcoming Nov 
25 “Science Friday” program on public radio. Broadcast times here 
<http://www.sciencefriday.com/>. Or, if impatient, the entire ceremony is 
available on YouTube <https://youtu.be/J9Vp41OPLdo> now.

I now return you back to our usual programming… 

— Eric
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