http://news.bostonherald....eid=105899

And the winner is ... inventor of fake dog testicles
By Associated Press
Friday, October 7, 2005

BOSTON - People thought Gregg Miller was nuts when he 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 that Miller runs from his home in Oak Grove, Mo.
He has sold more than 150,000 of his ``neuticals,'' more than doubling his $500,000 investment. The silicone implants are surgically attached to neutered dogs, cats, horses and bulls and come in different sizes, shapes, weights and degrees of firmness.
Now, Miller's patented prostheses have earned him a dubious yet strangely coveted honor: the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine.
``Considering my parents thought I was an idiot when I was a kid, this is a great honor,'' he told The Associated Press. ``I wish they were alive to see it.''
The Annals of Improbable Research handed out this year's Ig Nobels Thursday night at Harvard University.
The annual awards, which celebrate the humorous and creative side of science, medicine and technology, may not carry the prestige of the Nobel Prizes being presented this month. But many of the scientists who win Ig Nobels still consider it an honor.
Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, said the magazine gives nominees a chance to turn it down if they're embarrassed.
``Very few people ever do,'' he said. ``Most scientists - no matter what they're doing, good or bad - never get any attention at all.''
Miller, who taped his acceptance speech because he couldn't make it to Harvard this week, said his inspiration came when his own dog, Buck the bloodhound, got neutered
``Most people are neuter-hesitant,'' he said. ``It's traumatic for the dog. It's traumatic for the pet owner. With neuticals, it's like nothing ever changed.''
Some award-winners, like Benjamin Smith of the University of Adelaide in Australia, actually nominated their own work.
Smith was part of a research team that studied and catalogued different scents emitted by more than 100 species of frogs while under stress. They wanted to know why some frog secretions smelled like cashews, while others smelled like licorice, mint or rotting fish. Their paper, ``A Survey of Frog Odorous Secretions,'' won the Ig Nobel for biology.
``I think it's actually a good thing,'' Smith said. ``I've been a fan of the Ig Nobels for a while.''
Smith said he got strange looks when he'd show up at zoos and ask to smell their frogs.
``A few times, I've been turned away at the gate,'' he said.
This year's other Ig Nobel prizewinners include:
# PHYSICS: Since 1927, researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have been tracking a glob of congealed black tar as it drips through a funnel - at a rate of one drop every nine years.

# PEACE: Two researchers at Newcastle University in England monitored the brain activity of locusts as they watched clips from the movie ``Star Wars.''

# ECONOMICS: A graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented ``Clocky,'' an alarm clock on wheels that rolls away and hides so people have to wake up and get out of bed to turn it off.

# NUTRITION: A Japanese researcher has photographed and analyzed every meal he's eaten over the past 34 years.

# FLUID DYNAMICS: Scientists at universities in Germany, Finland and Hungary studied the digestive habits of penguins for a paper titled, ``Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh.''

# AGRICULTURAL HISTORY: A researcher at Massey University in New Zealand studied technological changes in dairy farming for a paper called, ``The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers.''

# CHEMISTRY: An experiment at the University of Minnesota was designed to prove whether people can swim faster or slower in syrup.
To answer that age-old question, engineering professor Edward Cussler timed a group of swimmers both before and after he dumped 700 pounds of a starchy substance called ``guar'' into one of the university's pools.
``It wasn't pretty,'' Cussler recalled. ``It sort of looked like diluted snot.''
Surprisingly enough - though of little consequence - his subjects swam just as fast in the syrupy water as they did in clean water.
``It has no value at all,'' Cussler concedes, carefully noting that no research money was spent on the experiment. ``People should not care about this. On the other hand, people do. They find it fascinating.''
The Ig Nobel for literature went to the ``Internet entrepreneurs'' from Nigeria who introduced millions of e-mail users to a ``cast of rich characters,'' including General Sani Abacha and Barrister Jon A. Mbeki, Esquire, ``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.''
The winners, whoever they are, did not attend Thursday's ceremony.
``We couldn't find them,'' Abrahams said. ``We made some minor efforts.''

jerseykrs said:

Does anyone else notice that Dook finds sick twisted stuff almost effortlessly, with extreme frequency?


YOU MUST NOTICE THIS!

heyduckie said:

Imago777 said:

Who's the chick in your avatar?

ReturnOfDOOK said:

Imago777 said:

Umm, they have been around. A friend of mines husband was going to get them for their dog several years ago.

How sick!!

What's the use ?
Do other dogs mind seeing dogs with 1 testicle ?
[Edited 10/7/05 17:12pm]

Dewrede said:

Whenever I'm around other dogs and they see my healthy pair of testicles, they do get pretty jealous. Although once they get a chance to smell them, they change their minds.

Nothing good can come of this thread. Nothing.

Michael Savage was goin off on this topic
recently. It'sbad enough to do that to a dog and then u em-bare-ass them wih these?

Does the dog lick them as if they were real?

I am not sure how to respond to this

origmnd said:

Do you like Savage!?!?!?

ReturnOfDOOK said:

He's a trip...I think he must have a chemical imbalance....he just goes off on the strangest tangents every so often.
If he just did the political crap I wouldn't listen.