Handed out at Harvard University by the Annals of Improbable Research, the annual spoof Nobels honor "achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think." In an appropriately silly word, it's jocoserious.

"An anti-hijacking system for an airplane to be operated during flight," reads Pizzo's patent, filed in 1972 and awarded two years later.

"A partition or barrier located immediately aft of the pilots cabin is adapted to be raised dividing the aft section longitudinally into port and starboard areas, the floors of which are dropped on command to lower the hijacker into a capsule in the belly of the plane. The capsule is releasable through opened bomb bay doors having attached thereto a parachute for safely returning the hijacker within the capsule to earth."

Seems like something out of Monty Python.