h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Earlier this month, Stanley Milgram was posthumously awarded an Ig Nobel prize in psychology for a study he and others did in 1969 "for experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward". One of his co-researchers, Leonard Bickman, accepted the prize. http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2023

Here is a link to the study: http://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/h0028070

That's wonderful news!

I started college in 1970. Everybody seemed to know about this study - we would conduct our own impromptu versions, like staring in a particular shop window to see if it drew a crowd (it did). I didn't take psychology and even I'd heard of it.

I have a sneaking suspicion Professor Milgram would have enjoyed the Ignobels, don't you?

Yes, birdwatching is a good hobby for that phenomenon - many's the time I've looked in the same direction as other people until someone gives in and says, 'What are we looking for?'

I once got my sister to look up in the sky when I pointed over the tree tops and said, "Look! A dead bird!"
It works rather too well.

That was mean.