The Annals of Improbable Research has announced the IgNobel prizes for 2012. Cracking Friday reading.

My favourites in no particular order:

• Literature for a “report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports”
• Neuroscience: “demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon”
• Medicine: “advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode”