Improbable Research

Karaoke-triggered killings and fights remind us why the Ig Nobel peace prize was awarded to the inventor of karaoke. The New York Times reports:

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

In 2004 the Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

Tickets are now available online for the Ig Nobel show Saturday, 13th March at the University of Dundee. This will be the first show on the 2010 Ig Nobel Tour of the UK (the 8th annual!) for National Science & Engineering Week.

A third scene from the documentary about Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr. Nakamats. This is about the Love Jet, one of his many inventions. It pertains to sex.

Another scene — this mostly underwater — from the documentary about Ig winner Dr. Nakamats:

The Invention of Dr. Nakamats is a soon-to-be-released documentary film about 2005 Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr.Yoshio Nakamats. Dr. Nakamats was awarded his Ig for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (now 39 years, and counting). That is but one of his thousands of accomplishments. Here is a preview of the film.

Two Ig Nobel Prize winners — Dan Ariely (Medicine 2008) and Phil Zimbardo (Psychology 2003) were honored, jointly, for having ideas that will benefit humanity. The official Innovation for Humanity Prize announcement:

Ariely y Zimbardo, winners of the Innovation for Humanity Prize.
One of the closing events for the La Ciudad de las Ideas 2009 Festival was the issuing of the Innovation for Humanity prize, whose objective is awarding the most innovative ideas for common good. It resulted in a tie again, now between Philip Zimbardo and Dan Ariely.