Ig It
The 2007 Nobel prizes have been announced and public recognition bestowed on many interesting and very intelligent people. The Ig Nobel Prizes, however, are intended to celebrate the unusual and honour the imaginative. Now in their 17th year, the Igs, as they are affectionately known, have a simple selection criterion. The prizes are for “achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced”. Every one of the 10 Ig Nobel prizewinners each year has done something that makes people laugh and then makes them think. The 2007 winners include the Ig Nobel Medicine Prize awarded to Dr Meyer and Dr Witcombe for their cutting-edge research on the medical side effects of sword swallowing. And this year’s Ig Nobel Peace Prize honoured The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon – the so-called ‘gay bomb’ – that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other. http://improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html

Buy It
Kudos to The Charlatans and Radiohead, two massive international bands offering their latest albums free and on a ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ downloadable basis respectively. Radiohead’s latest release In Rainbows, www.inrainbows.com, is making all the international news headlines with its ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ download approach or the option of having a specially made disc box with extra songs and two vinyl albums delivered to you in December for GBP£40. The Charlatans’ latest, though, is downloadable completely free through indie music radio station www.xfm.co.uk, starting with the first single You Cross My Path on October 22. Nine Inch Nails, who recently played here, have announced they are completely independent of any record company now. So expect something different from Trent… as we watch the extend death throes of conventional record companies.

Beach It
Taking place between November 2 and 11, the Beach Festival hosted at Victoria Park will feature an International Women’s Beach Handball tournament with national teams including China, Hong Kong and Japan (November 2-4) and total prize money of US$11,000. The Women’s Beach Volleyball International Challenge on the following weekend (November 9-11) will give world ranking points to successful teams. Fourteen countries are currently participating, including the two Chinese Olympic teams. Beach rugby, soccer, bodybuilding contests and Latin dance performances will also be on display.
www.hkbeachfestival.org

Social It
Or not. Following closely on the heels of Apple’s new iTouch range, comes Microsoft with the all-new Zune 2 – a wafer-thin flash-memory-based portable music player. The original Zune was a mess, but the new releases, a 4GB (US$150) and an 8GB ($200) flash-memory edition – both of which come in black, pink, green and red – and a black 80GB (US$250) hard-drive edition, have a host of new features, including a touch-sensitive Zune pad for navigation, extended Zune-Zune wireless song sharing, a Wi-Fi syncing feature and an FM tuner. Sadly Microsoft continues to cripple the Zune with restrictive DRM practices that belie its ‘social’ marketing hype.

Gift It
It must be nice having a spare $1.8 billion lying around which you can give to the community. That is how much the HK Jockey Club has kindly gifted to preserve the Central Police Station and add another iconic structure to our beautiful skyline. At least the giant scaffold marks a major shift away from buildings in the image of giant phalluses, and its projected 500-seat auditorium, 500-seat theatre, two art cinemas, a gallery and a multi-purpose exhibition space will be welcomed by local arts groups. A tad cynical, maybe… plans are one thing, let’s see it built – but thank you to the jockey club.

Flaunt It
You may not be going to the Olympics next year but there is no reason you can’t flaunt a bit of Olympic gold bling. Samsung, an official worldwide partner of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, has launched the special limited edition Samsung Anycall Olympic phone – 18K Golden Edition complete with Olympic Games logo and 18K golden reflective surface. Not something you want to leave in a taxi. For a complete rundown of this quad band phone’s abilities, check out www.samsungmobile.com.hk – sadly Samsung, a ‘caring company’, don’t offer a bilingual version of their Hong Kong website, so if you can’t read Chinese… tough. This bit of Olympic bling will set you back $2,780.