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2003 MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Winners Announced
ccnull writes "This year's list of 24 MacArthur Fellows has been released. Each winner of the so-called 'Genius Grant' receives $500,000, no strings attached. 2003's winners include a blacksmith, a biomedical engineer, a computation geometer, a biophysicist, a nurse, and a short story writer 'crafting witty, experimental prose.'"
Yes, envious of 500K for something that unexciting, unoriginal, and boring. Indeed.
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Couldn't agree with you more. Putting money into art is a large mistake and eventual waste of that money. There are many areas of research that actually acomplish something that are substantially under funded or that would benefit from this money. Art has never saved anyones life or accomplished anything of any worth for that matter. And to the other poster that said art was popular among non-geeks, I have to argue that most people do not care in the slightest about art and this is shown as there are fewer and fewer worthy museums every year and the large ones mostly have to have funding by the government or external sources as they are not attracting enough people to even support there own costs. I have never heard art classified as popular among non-geeks. Most art exhibits/ exhibitions don't even attract as many people as your average high school football game in the US. I'm not saying that artists should stop doing what they are doing however what there doing for the majority of them is a hobby and should be considered as nothing more and definately does not deserver to be in the ranks of the other professions or accomplishments mentioned.
How long has it been since a teacher got a decent raise?
Not nearly as long as most people think. 44k average nationwide isn't bad at all. It's more than I made in tech support or programming.
The starving teacher myth is yet another bit of Leftist propoganda served up some people in the media, and it's a very persistant myth. It's almost as persistant as the starving elderly myth. I wager the elderly are, on average, actually the wealthiest segment of society. Lobbying groups like the AARP and pandering politicians want you to believe these interest groups are "starving". It just isn't true.
Of course there are exceptions. There always are. It's just that the "starving arborists" don't have a lobbying group like the NEA or AARP.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?