Slashdot Mirror
Nobel Prizes Awarded
imrdkl writes: "Looks like Cisco has done a deal with CNN to present a nice overview of the Nobel Prizes this year. The Science awards that have been presented so far include one for singing atoms in Physics, as well as others linked from the URL above for medicine and chemistry. It's worth noting that the physics article was already covered here on slashdot, but now it's official for all."
The Nobel prizes are useless, the real stuff is here :)
I'm so excited about Annan winning the money. It always amazes me how much money the Nobel is: a million dollars! Take a look at last year's winners, Arafat and Rabin. Together, they shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in the Middle East. Admittedly, each of them only pocketed half a million apiece, but that's still some serious dough.
And Annan's work has been every bit as effective as theirs! The Nobel comittee has done a great job picking the best representatives of peacemaking in the world.
I hope Arafat still has some of his money, so he can use it to build a house which is impervious to helicopter-mounted missiles. It isn't always easy being a Leader of Peace. But you know what they say: one step forward, one step back, but the Path to Peace is still on track!
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
A few points. Rwanda and Yugoslavia occured when Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the sec-gen of the UN. In these cases, and to a lesser degree that of Somalia, much of the blame should be placed on the tendeancy of member-states, especially the US, to ask great things of the UN while not offering the required personnelÂ& equipment to get the job done, while at times - most nauseously in the case of Rwanda - actively blocking any efforts to restore peace. During the same period, the UN succesfully oversaw the restoration of democracy in Cambodia, the return of order & democracy to Haiti, and the maintenance of peace where there were peacekeepers, as well as several other operations I have forgotten. Under Anan, East Timor was governed by the UN until self-government could be established (which it now has been), Kosovo was and is under a similar arrangement, and peace negotiations were overseen & peacekeepers installed between Ethiopia & Eritrea, as well as many other things I'm forgetting.
I'll leave the mideast to someone more brave than I, but your last paragraph.. I most seriously suggest that you educate yourself on the current state of affairs accross Africa. First off, Anan - like many others - is doing much to improve the state of affairs in Africa, just as he is also doing much to improve the state of affairs on every other continent on earth. To insinuate he has no place on the world state because he is African, or because he spearheads initiatives like UNAIDS (which is a global program in any case) is ignorant, myopic, racist and contemptable. Few would seriously claim that 'white man' is the cause of all problems in Africa; likewise, few would claim that 'white man' is blameless for the same. The very idea of 'white man' s a reducto ad absurdum whose only valiidity arises from mindsets like yours in history.
Has anyone noted that the MIT presence among the Nobel laureates this year is particularly strong? 8 of 14 had some MIT affiliation.