The 2007 Ig Nobel Prize winners have been announced (summary). Mixed in with studies of hampsters on Viagra and “extracting vanilla flavor from cow dung” was something of particular interest to Thingology. The “literature” prize went to:

“The Definite Article: Acknowledging ‘The’ in Index Entries,” Glenda Browne, The Indexer, vol. 22, no. 3 April 2001, pp. 119-22.

Hey, it’s a problem!
Update: A good example of the problem? Try to search for the band “The The” on Google. You can’t even do it with quotes.