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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.'"
It's not a grant if there are no strings attached, it's an entitlement.
Sure, and the average painter can throw together a Rothko, Mondrian or a Pollock, the average composer can whip up a piece by Reich or Glass and the average architect can create a building a la Frank Lloyd Wright.
In other words, simply because a work lacks complexity, it does not dismiss the genius in creating such an original work.
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
It always kills me when people with interesting, fun jobs get money and awards. Like this and the Academy Awards. To qualify for these awards you first have to have a great job that you love. In that case do you really need more award.
Where's the award for the programmer who refactored 500K lines of hopeless spaghetti code left over by some idiot who hard no idea about structured programing?!
Private parties should give money to whoever they want w/o idjits like you saying "what about the children......what about Africa......what about the poor"
Give YOUR money to whoever the fuck you want to and stop telling other people how to spend theirs!
I have to argue that most people do not care in the slightest about art
Great. Make sure you delete all those MP3s on your hard drive. Wouldn't want that art to get to you or anything.
Unless of course it's that dreck the labels shovel to the masses. That is *NOT* art, so you can keep it.
While you're at it, what color is your car? If it's not white (cheap paint and reflects most solar heating) then it's not a paint chosen for function. Make sure you only buy white cars in the future. And no radios. Those waste power.
Same goes for your house. No paintings on the wall, all white walls and carpets. Efficiency, not aesthetics!
And, you're not one of those casemodding people are you? That's a waste of resources!
And ultimately, I think the point everyone who DIDN'T READ THE ARTICLE is missing is that this is a PRIVATE foundation giving these grants out. It's their money. If they want to give a grant for a blacksmith to study the expressiveness of metal, it's THEIR MONEY to give. If they wanted to give a grant to study the number of cats that walk by a given house in a year, same deal.
Yeah, show me where in the U.S. teachers are being overpaid. Only neo-con, big business puppets suggest that teachers are paid too much. Sure, the state of education in the US has resulted in underqualifed or just pain bad teachers in some areas, but generally only because those districs are so dangerous and hopeless that better teachers get discouraged and quit.
If we paid teachers well we'd attract more teachers that are truly talented, like we did just thirty five years ago, when teachers salaries where about the same as doctors and lawyers. Those teachers taught me, and they were fantastic. I feel sorry for today's students.
Look, you knew what teachers made when you chose the profession. (If you didn't, you have an even bigger problem, but we're going to assume that you did.) You chose to become a teacher and you chose to accept the salary. Why is it that teachers are about the only group in this society who are constantly whining about being underpaid, as though their pay is some sort of moral issue? You don't hear people in any other profession whine about their pay with the same sort of self-righteous indignation that we hear from teachers.
If you don't like the pay as a teacher, get out of the profession. Go find something for which the pay is higher. It's YOUR choice.
And another thing. Teacher unions have led the whining for years that we need lower student/teacher ratios (so the unions can have more jobs for their members). In my state, the current ratio is 15-1. When I was growing up in the '60s and '70s, it was typical to have 25 to 30 kids in each class, yet the quality of instruction continues to go DOWN, in spite of the lower student/teacher ratios. If teachers would do a better job of educating kids in classes of the old size, that WOULD leave more money to pay the decent teachers better.
My mother was a teacher for her entire career and my father started as a teacher, so I have respect for many of the people who choose to do it. But the truth is that the profession is LOADED with many, many incompetent boobs (being administrered by other incompetent boobs) who would rather whine than figure out how to do the job they're being paid to do.
More likely is that the nominators are packed into these schools. If you want to be nominated you now know where to find the nominators.
Government support of the arts is an ancient practice.
Mozart, Schubert, Emily Bronte and John Keats died young and poor - who knows what more they could have done had they been given financial support?
more like:
those who can but hate kids and don't care about the future of the country but only of themselfs, do
those who can and are selfless people who want to help the youth become the leaders of tomorrow teach.
those who have been teachers (and therefore have the same qualities as above) teach teachers
those who can't teach and are morons, administrate
those who are dick head politicos who want to push the educational system into their little ideological corner and could not give a crap about what is best for the kids, are on the school board.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Technology makes life comfortable. Art makes it worth living.
"44k average nationwide isn't bad at all."
For the level of education/training/certification required, it kind of sucks if you ask me. Anyone who could be a good teacher ought to be able to do better elsewhere. Which of course, most of them do.
"It's more than I made in tech support or programming."
How long were you a programmer? 44K average; as in for teachers at all points in their careers. If making an average of 44K over the course of a life long career as a programmer sounds good to you, you must be a lousy programmer. I passed that mark in year 2. Teachers should expect to in year what? 15, 20? That's pretty lame.
I don't know what you were getting paid as an entry level programmer, but whatever it was, I'll bet you that much that it's more than an entry-level teacher gets in your school district.
Perhaps if good teachers couldn't make more money doing tech support, we'd have better teachers, and then you'd know how to spell "persistent". Not to mention knowing whether it makes sense to compare your entry level salary to the average for an entire profession.