What a Great Country!!
A Major Award anybody can shoot for.
Fake dog testicles win acclaim at Ig Nobels
‘Star Wars’ watching locusts and dripping tar studies also honored
BOSTON – Gregg Miller mortgaged his home and maxed out his credit cards to mass produce his invention — prosthetic testicles for neutered dogs.
What started 10 years ago with an experiment on an unwitting Rottweiler named Max has turned into a thriving mail-order business. And on Thursday night Miller’s efforts earned him a dubious yet strangely coveted honor: the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine.
Fido may not have his gonads (the technical term), but he does have his PRIDE.
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October 6, 2005 11:06 pm
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Y’know, I can see some technical difficulties with this idea. I assume the inventor has overcome them, else he wouldn’t have sold so many. For example:
+ What if Fido doesn’t like the taste? Worse, what if Fido does like the taste, like any good doggie toy? Either scenario could cause major confusion and embarrassment to uninformed guests.
+ I hope he used a heat resistant material, and not cheap rubber. Think of the consequences if Fido sat down on a hot sidewalk, or spent too long in the hot sun.
The return of “pet rocks”!
It took balls the try and stick them on a Rottweiler.
I’ll bet it’s aimed at the dog show crowd that have to have intact males to compete.
The story didn’t surprise me at all. Nothing surprises me since I learned that someone makes contact lenses for chickens. I had to write a case study about these guys in b-school:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19890501/5636.html
I thought it was a joke until I researched them on the net.
There is nary a market niche so hidden that someone hasn’t tried to make a product for it.
Yes, yes, that’s all very well but did they win a Major Award for them? You’re NOBODY ’til there’s a trophy on the table and a certificate on the wall, baby!
Well, I don’t know about any awards, but being written up in Harvard Business Review is pretty prestigious for an entrepreneur.
I still think HBR wrote them up just for laughs.
Now just think about the poor smucks who have to put the lenses in the chickens. They deserve an award or two.
But if you are giving out awards, the USDA scientsts who conducted the “Dairy 2002” study need a BIG one:
“During Dairy 2002, fecal samples were
collected via rectal retrieval from approximately five operations in each of the 21 States participating in the study.”
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/ ncahs/nahms/dairy/dairy02/Dairy02Ecoli.pdf
Excuse me sir, what do you do for a living?
I stick my hand up cows’ asses looking for E. Coli O-157. Can’t let that stuff hit the ground, or we’ll never know which cow is infected.
How did you get that job?
Well, shit rolls downhill. Excuse me, I’ve got to go bathe, again. Gotta take three showers just to get dirty.
And that, my friends is why we hire undergraduate research assistants in Academia.
GackgackgackgackGACK!! Sounds like a scientific research grant funded episode of Dirty Jobs. You have got to be starving to take those jobs. (‘Cause you’re sure not afterwards!)
It occurs to me that this guy’s product might become needed in Orinda.