What'll they think of next?
You know, when I was in graduate school, I actually used research on how much time, on average, an average cow spends lying down or standing (for the record, they spend about half their time lying down and half their time standing), so I'm inclined to see value in, well, almost anything.
But I have to admit, when reading about the Ig-Nobel Awards at New Scientist, that I was particularly taken by the researchers who developed a device to translate dog barks into Japanese.
And, of course, you have to love this:
The economics prize was shared among a long list of corporations for "adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world."