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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."
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.
As someone who works with Bose-Einstein condensates all I can say is that I've never heard one sing. Since they're kept under vacuum I can't hear them scream either. Pity.
I'm not sure I'd want "computers that rival the brain in ... storage."
My experience is the brain has an exceedingly high rate of data loss =)
The Maths equivalent of the Nobel prize is the Fields medal.
... but I suspect that's just a rumour put about to make maths look interesting :-)
My professor at university claimed that there isn't a Nobel prize for Mathematics because Alfred Nobel's wife ran off with a mathematician
It may be worth noting that Norway recently set up a rather large fund for an international mathematics prize, in memory of mathematician Niels Henrik Abel. Information here.
One assumes there was slightly more to their theories than this!
More worryingly, why does one of the recipients look exactly like Steve Martin?
---As for the economics award, the world has no use for a science dedicated to depriving people of freedom and controlling them.---
This is an extremely unfair assement of the field of economics. Just because you may not like the some of the thrust of a social science is no reason to charge it with evil motives. And I would guess from your characterization that your sense of an "economist" is a boogeyman out of the Wall Street Journal, not a brilliant and thoughtful man like Joeseph Stiglitz. Indeed, the general thrust of academic economics is almost entirely the OPPOSITE of what you describe: it's normative goals are everywhere and always to maximize things like choice and social welfare.
Obligatory Futurama reference ("Mars University" episode):
Professor: "It's a little experiment that may well win me the Nobel Prize."
Leela: "In what field?"
Professor: "I don't care, they all pay the same."
and i hope it doesn't also follow that only about 20% of it could actually be used
chiefly economics, for consideration of the Nobel prize. Look throughout the history of the Nobel prize in economics and you will find a great deal of signficant mathematical research, partiuclarly in operations research.
...regarding where the Internet might take us in the next 20 years.
More information can be found here.
-k
Balderdash. In a few years generic versions of these drugs will be available at low cost. Thats about as good as you are going to get - if you cut the money out of the commercial drug business, you won't get any drugs for rich or for poor, as the generics manufacturers simply don't spend the research dollars necessary to develop the drugs.
As for the economics award, the world has no use for a science dedicated to depriving people of freedom and controlling them.
Thats odd, Milton Freidman is renowned for his award winning thesis that political freedom and economic freedom are closely related.
The only awards that I can inequivocably agree with are the literature and peace awards. The United Nations has done a lot of good work, and it is a shame that the American government is blind to the advantages of supporting it completely.
Yes, how could Americans not see the value in a bloated bureaucracy that is not elected and is accountable to no one? I thought there was a revolution fought over those same principles...
Arafat won the Peace Prize jointly with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for his part in negotiating and signing the Oslo peace accords in 1993. I think that was justified - it was certainly a vast step for all of them to take.
I don't have space here to go into an in-depth discussion of the current Israeli-Palestinian situation, but suffice it to say that Israel never offered to end the occupation. They offered to end a significant percentage of it, but the remaining ~20% was so strewn about the West Bank that it would've made any Palestinian state unviable. See this site (an Israeli one, no less) for some maps of Barak's offers.
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Well actually, the medecine prize was given to 2 people who work for the Imperial Cancer Research Foundation which is a UK based charity, and one person who works in the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center which is also a non-profit organisation.
First of all, Arafat won the Peace Prize in 1994 for negotiating and signing the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.
Secondly, Barak never offered all of the West Bank, Gaza, and Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. He offered most of the Gaza strip (I don't have an exact number), ~80% of the West Bank, and left Jerusalem for "final status negotiations," making no concrete offers regarding it. See here for some maps of Barak's offers in the West Bank (from Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace-advocacy group).
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1. The Wall Street Journal is read by people who run the country.
/. is read by clueless screen gazers that have yet to learn that it takes more than a half-baked opinion and routine typing skills to run a country.
2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their smog statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parent used to run the country, and they did a far superior job of it, thank you veddy much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care, as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped, minority, feminist, atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be
illegal aliens from any country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.
10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
11. The Spokane Spokesman-Review is read by people who need high grade tinder to fire up their woodstoves, and can barely get their cars running in this cold.
12.)
This doesn't follow. The economics prize of sort of new. You could imagine something similar happening with math, for example.
Not that it's necessary, mind you, because there's no real need for a math Nobel prize at this point...
Come on, give it up, that's
And singing, what's up with that?
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.
Well, actually, the first guy wasn't so far off the mark. Economists do have a lot of incentive to accomodate meddling politicians when they are out to ``help'' us. The economist who mentions Hayek's and von Mises' work, and reminds us that interference in a market economy leads us inexorably towards socialist ruin, is not going to be popular with politicians or bureaucrats, and is not going to find it easy to get grants, fat government-affiliated jobs, and so on.
There are economists who tell the truth (I'm thinking of Friedman, but of course there are many others), but there are a lot who choose to see the truth the way brilliant and thoughtfull men like Joseph Stiglitz do: if supporting government meddling buggers things up in the long run, well, that's job security for us economists.
Macro and general equilibrium theory are always about maximizing social welfare, choice simply isn't an issue. Indeed, I've never seen choice in the utility function in a macro model. The problem with maximizing ``social welfare'' is that it neglects individual welfare. It leads to depriving people of their freedom and controlling them, to keep the little bastards from maximizing their own welfare rather than society's. This leads, ultimately, to the cultural revolution, the killing fields of Cambodia, the current mess in Zimbabwe, the Nazi death camps, and so on.No economist ever calls for such things (I hope), but if we start maximizing social welfare, that is the logical final step: if they won't do what we say is best for them, we'll make 'em ... if they resist, we'll kill 'em. After all, we know so much more than they do.
One hundred years ago, this line of thinking was called ``the White man's burden''. Today, we call it social planning. ``The intellectual's burden'' would fit better. There is a tremendous lot of arrogance in this view of the world, whether we call it the ``Whiteman's burden'' or ``addressing market failure''.
See what I've been reading.
All I know is that about half the used cars for sale are lemons, worth nothing, and about half are good ones, worth $15,000. I have no way of knowing which is which. On average, if I buy a bunch of these cars, I'll be ok if I pay $7,500 each.
If you sell your good car for $7,500, you get screwed.
If no-one will sell good cars for less than $15,000, then I know that there are no good cars for sale, and I don't buy at all.
Both these outcomes are market failure due to imperfect information. Neither version is likely to last for long in the real world: some third party will come along and sell inspections (i.e., information) for a big chunk of the profits we are loosing.
Of course, this is just the beginning. Take a look in Mas-Colell, Whinston and Green's Microeconomic Theory for more. I don't think Varian has it.
More worryingly, why does one of the recipients look exactly like Steve Martin?
Obviously, one of the economists who got the Nobel prize was wearing a Steve Martin mask, trying to pose as a celebrity. Some people will do anything to be noticed.
See what I've been reading.
Anyone who thinks an indtustrialized nation in the process of teaching its women and children how to kill with pointy sticks as a method of defence is "on the brink of surrender" has another thing coming.
Japan, contrary to the rather misguided perceptions of the historicaly naive, was more or less in the grip of a throwback code of morality dictated by the military elements in the nation known as "Bushido." The word breaks into Bushi and Do meaning Warrior and Way, or more generaly, the way of the warrior.
Japan and the japanese were prepared to fight to the end. Estimates as to the K.I.A count (Killed in Action) for invading and holding the home islands of Japan ran well into the hundreds of thousands [US Troops only]. For your reference, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagisaki combined killed a scant 105 thousand Japanese, well within the estimates for a home island invasion.
Was the US justified in droping the Atomic Bomb? Based on what we now know about the bomb's after affects, no. But that information was not available on August 6, 1945. You can not hold the military planners responcible for forces beyond their understanding or indeed anyone's understanding in this case.
Finaly, for comparitive purposes consider the casualtie estimates for the fire bombing attack on Tokyo -- 234,412, Dresden - 250,000 (high estimate). Japan lost some 107,539 soliders at the battle of Okinawa alone, burned out by flame throwers for the most part. US Army estimates put total Japanese losses for Okinawa at more than 140,000.
So was the atomic bombing really an act to scare the Soviets? Probably not. More importantly, Truman and Stalin got along wonderfully. Truman is often quoted discribing Stalin as "a man I can worth with." There was no need for Truman to frighten Stalin, indeed, Truman himself said that US posturing after WWII was not because of his fear of Stalin, but rather who would come after him.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you, just pointing out the problems in that statement of yours.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
My professor at university claimed that there isn't a Nobel prize for Mathematics [almaz.com] because Alfred Nobel's wife ran off with a mathematician ... but I suspect that's just a rumour put about to make maths look interesting :-)
You're right to be suspicious.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
regarding: "Looks like Cisco has done a deal with CNN..." - Don't you think it would be nice if the advertising implicit in this statement had been screened out before the story was accepted?
- In a knowledge based industry your main asset will always be people -
Has anyone noted that the MIT presence among the Nobel laureates this year is particularly strong? 8 of 14 had some MIT affiliation.
Gush Shalom did acknowledge, if you'd read the page, that Barak made more extensive offers in his final days in office. However, these were not taken seriously by any sides, as it was doubtful that Barak, well on his way out of office, would be able to live up to his end of the bargain - he hadn't even presented the concessions he was supposedly offering on their behalf to the Israeli public, and Sharon, leading by a large margin in the polls, indicated that even if Barak signed an agreement, he would not honor it.
And the concessions still were not the ones you are claiming. They were more, but still not "100% of Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem" - for example, Barak still did not offer a withdrawal from the largest Israeli settlements, those on the outskirts of Jerusalem, such as the contentious neighborhood of Gilo (built on land seized in the 1967 war but since unilaterally annexed by Israel).
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BS. The UN is a group of appointed officials accountable to no one but each other.
Democracy implies that the people make the decision who is in charge, not a committee.
And before you repsond, the UN Security Council, which is the real power in the UN, has permanent members whose membership and voting rights cannot be questioned.
Thats democracy?????
Very soon after the US was dragged into WWII, we reached an agreement with our allies (Great Britain & the other Commonwealth nations then, the USSR soon after) that the war was only going to end with the unconditional surrender of the Axis nations. This policy arose because less drastic treatment of the Germans in 1918 worked out quite badly in the long run, and because it did not seem possible to negotiate a peace with the Nazi leadership that would allow trying them for war crimes and hanging them. (What they _deserved_ was something far more agonizing and drawn out than their execution of Rommel, but since we're civilized people we had to settle for hanging...) In hindsight, it's clear that this was a very good policy -- for Germany.
Unthinkingly extending it to Japan may have been a poor idea. I make no claims to expertise about Bushida, but it's obvious that Samurai didn't surrender unconditionally. One reason may be that the Bushido code allowed torturing captives, unless there was an agreement not to do that before surrender. On the other hand, once the war was clearly lost (possibly even in 1943), if we had offered a treaty that treated the Emperor and the Japanese people well but required death for the cabinet and high military command, Bushido would have required them to do what was best for their employers -- sign it, then slit their own bellies. I'm not sure they really had the courage to go through with that, but showing the leaders up as something less than true Samurai might have shortened the war also.
The trouble was, Japanese culture was a mystery to FDR and Churchill, and they didn't spend much time thinking about it anyhow. Nazi Germany was the big threat, and the Pacific war a side-show until Germany went down. Only a fraction of our force went to the Pacific, and much of that was hardware that was of little or no use against Germany; for example American submarines would have found no targets in the Atlantic, but devastated Japan's merchant fleet.
So with this lack of thought about Japan, when Truman assumed office he found himself bound by agreements with many nations to accept nothing but unconditional surrender, and with many pressures both political and practical to end it _fast_. Japan was the last hold-out. Politically, the American people wanted Japan finished off fast, and also there was the threat that Stalin would snatch some or all of Japan and keep it. Practically, the harbors were full of landing craft, and the great army that defeated Germany was waiting for either another job or discharge. If that army landed on a Japanese beach, over 100,000 Americans would have died, and it's unlikely that once it broke through the defenses it could have been restrained before millions of "Japs" were killed.
Truman had one alternative -- a weapon so frightful that it might change anyone's mind. But he only had two bombs, which actually could not inflict as much damage as thousands of B29's carrying conventional weapons already had. So a bluff was required, to not only blow up two smallish cities, but to give the impression that we were just going to keep on blowing up one or two cities a week until they surrendered...
Certainly there was racism: on the west coast, Japanese-Americans (even some citizens) were rounded up indiscriminately, even though there were NO incidents of spying or sabotage by any Japanese-American. On the other hand, Hitler had an organization in place to recruit spies and saboteurs from the German-Americans, and some actual traitors had been caught, but only a few thousand were ever detained. But this doesn't have much to do with the decision to drop the A-bombs. If they had been ready before victory in Europe, no doubt they'd have been used on German cities.
Based upon the fact that the world - its leaders included - saw the horror of nuclear war firsthand, and that said horror was the foundation of the M.A.D. doctrine and the notion of deterrence, and that deterrence worked (by virtue of you and I being alive today) to prevent potential flashpoints in Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba from escalating into a full-fledged nuclear exchange...
Indeed, dropping the Bomb on Japan may have saved not just the lives of US servicemen and Japanese soldiers and civilians during an assault on the Japanese mainland, but it may well have saved all our asses from a Cold War gone "hot".
Normaly I dismiss AC posts as mindless tripe, but that one about silly revisionist bitching was right on.
I'd also be most interested to see a link or anything to this supposed evidence of yours indicating that Japan was just on the edge of their seats waiting for us to ask them to surrender so that they might throw down their arms and welcome US hegemony in the Pacific with open arms.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
If we are to continue this debate, and if you persist in refusing to cite any credible evidence to support your point I shall do it for you.
A rather revisionist, and somewhat biased argument which agrees with your viewpoint is available here. I should point out a few serious flaws in this logic.
First is the assumption that the Japanese leadership wanted to ensure the continued reign of the Emperor. This is true, however what the argument fails to point out is that the Emperor's court, including military advisors, was also included in this request. In short, those directing the war effort desired to remain in control of the country. This is clearly unaccecptable.
The revisionist argument dismisses the possibility of the elimination of the Japanese military brach entirely as a solution for peace in Asia, contending that American influence in Asia was a destabilizing element. Nonetheless, most realist scholars would agree that a Bi-Polar system in the Asian theator would be inherantly more stable than a Hegemonic system [in this case dominated by the USSR].
By 1945 Truman had allready begun to searously fear Soviet expansion, not because of any problem he had with Stalin, but because of the danger of future intentions. That is to say, Truman worried about Stalin's successor, not Stalin himself. Should the USSR have taken the Japanese islands the Soviets would hold a position of complete military hegemony in the Pacific theator.
Another suggestion is the possibility of a test detonation, to prove to the Japanese that the Bomb worked and that we could use it. This, many argue would scare them into surrender. Besides being radicly inconsistant with the origional point, that is: the Japenese were ready to surrender allready, this assumes a large supply of bombs. While many revisionist historians will tell you that there were two bombs ready and many more on the way the fact of the matter is that the United States had 2 weapons, one on the way, and no forseeable production for several months in the future.
Washington allowed surrender with the continuation of the Emperor's reign on the condition that all military advisors step down, many to face trial. Remember that the emperor's power had been largely sequestered, and as many have pointed out, our cracking of the Purple code allowed us to more or less divine this.
If you are to point me in the direction of a history book please supply a reference. While WWII is not my speciality, I feel that my grasp of it is fairly solid, and significaly less influenced by "pop-history" than most. I will ask again, what evidence do you have to support your arguments? Much as I would like to trust your written word as gospel truth, I'm afraid that's asking a bit much
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.