Dr. NakaMats’s Meals
Dr. Yoshiro NakaMats, an eccentric 78-year-old Japanese inventor who claims 3,000 patents to his name, has spent the last 36 years photographing and analyzing his every meal. For this work, he was awarded a 2005 Ig Noble Prize for Nutrition. Dr. NakaMats is pictured above coming up with new ideas underwater. From an interview with Dr. NakaMats in Ping Magazine:
How do you ‘trigger’ an invention?
A lack of oxygen is very important.
A lack? Isn’t that dangerous??
It’s very dangerous. I get that Flash just 0.5 sec before death. I remain under the surface until this trigger comes up and I write it down with a special waterproof plexiglas writing pad I invented.
April 9th, 2007 at 11:49 am
This is similar to the technique Austen Osman Spare (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Osman_Spare )used to effect magical changes.
Notes on the Death Posture can be found here:
http://www.hermetic.com/spare/zos_kia_essay.html
April 10th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
ping site seems to be down. would love to read that interview. somebody should “ping” them. heheh. ok sorry.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
[...] May 15th, 2007 by taguan Dr. Nakamats said that the flash of inspiration comes a .05 second before death (he would go underwater and hold his breath until he can’t anymore. He even said that the lack of oxygen is very important). It makes me think of the amazing things God has done in the times when I dared to get that close to the end of my strength, to the end of my ability and take me farther than I thought I could go. [...]
August 19th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
On the subject of inventors:
I remember someone telling me he invented the Walkman while underwater, when they in fact meant Nobutoshi Kihara, an engineer at Sony who worked on the Walkman, among other things.
In 2005, a man named Andreas Pavel was paid out of court by Sony after fighting them for years. Here is the story, for those interested:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/16/news/profile.php