The Chronicle of Higher Education has just released a report on higher-education earmarks from 2007 (in other words, which members of Congress are buying the local scholar vote, and with what). You, busy web surfer, don’t have time to go through all 2,600 of them to find the funny ones. But I do!

1. Auburn University: $439,899 for the Tri-State Joint Peanut Research Project.
2. Auburn, again: $431,000 to research the catfish genome. Is there a gene marker for “delicious when deep-fried?” (If so, I think nearly every food has it.)
3. Central Washington University: $191,593 for a wine quality education program. Sign me up.
4. Iowa State University: $195,621 to study strategies to reduce poultry and swine odor emission. I wonder if it all went to purchasing those little taxicab pine tree thingies.
5. Colorado State University: $228,390 to study Russian wheat aphid resistance. Resistance to what, the current regime? Putin will crush them. Between his fingers.
6. Cornell University: $3.2 million for the High Frequency Active Auroral Research program. I bet you anything this is really a death-metal concert series.
7. Delaware Technical & Community College: $238,755 for equipment for the Shaping the Future of Delaware Citizens program. Resistance is futile.
8. Donnelly College: $235,000 for “inmate education.” Aren’t they supposed to call them “students?”
9. La Salle University: $44,214 for abstinence education. In college. Good luck with that.
10. Louisiana State University: $100,293 for blackbird control. Paging Alfred Hitchcock.
11. Louisiana State, again: $243,285 “to start a productive alligator research program.” My first thought: How do you tell if alligators are productive? Do they have outboxes and project goals? Maybe that’s what the research is for.
12. Michigan State University: $156,894 for improved fruit-practices research. I can’t really improve on this one.
13. Missouri State University: a whopping $4.8 mil to research “developmental carbon nanotube-based radiation hard non-volatile RAM.” I made it as far as “carbon.”
14. Montana State University: $148,950 for the Montana Sheep Institute. Seriously.
15. University of Alaska: $968,175 for berry research. That’s all it says. Berry research.
16. University of Florida: $1.2 million for citrus canker research.
17. University of Georgia: $189,663 for integrated fruit and vegetable research. The applesparagus, coming soon to a Safeway near you.
18. University of Kentucky: $480,612 for (quotation marks not mine) “advanced genetic technologies.” It makes me nervous when they wield quotation marks like that.
19. Not to be outdone by Montana, the University of Maine gets $188,000 for their Lobster Institute. Much tastier.
20. University of Toledo: $893,700 for research on health impacts of sewage-sludge application. I’d hate to be the lowly graduate assistant on that project.
21. Utah State University: just over $1 million to research large predators and how they affect livestock. I’m going to go with “negatively.”

And what amusing research project would YOU like to see funded by porky congresspeople? Tell us in the comments!