Congratulations to Daisuke Inoue, winner of the 2004 Ig Nobel Peace Prize. Inoue was the inventor of karaoke, providing, according to the official citation, "an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other".

The 14th annual Ig Nobel Prizes were presented at Harvard University on Thursday night. The ceremony was webcast (damn, if only I knew in advance!). Among other winners in the ten categories, the authors of "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide" won the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine, the Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain won the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the Vatican won the Ig Nobel Prize in Economics for outsourcing prayers to India.

The complete list of 2004 winners can be found in the Harvard Gazette, while the badly-designed Ig Nobel Prize website (probably on purpose) has all the winners since inception in 1991.

Reports from the New Scientist and the Guardian.