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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.'"
Why not me? I am not going to make it in my profession.
Erik Demaine is also a recipient. He is the one who showed Tetris is an NP-complete problem.
Not giving a person 5000000 for something like that?
How about giving 50 people who are smart.. but can't afford university a chance? How about giving them a life that they wouldn't have been able to afford?
Or donating it to help the kids in Africa.. or anything that's mildly useful?
Seems to me like this is just the recursive pattern in our society "Let's make the rich, richer" Sure.. some of these people aren't rich, but they sure aren't starving. I'm sure if they've been noticed by this foundation that they are preety well off.
Whoever runs this.. think of what your money could do in the hands of people who really need it.
Interestingly, among the academics given the MacArthur grants, the Ivy league schools Harvard, MIT and Yale appear to be producing a number of these folks whether at the undergraduate level, the graduate level or the faculty level. Many of the recipients appear to have done at least some time at those institutions.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
This sort of philanthropy is very rare in Australia. Does this happen elsewhere in the world?
To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
Try going to a museum some time. Some of the greatest works of art ever done were conceived with the help of huge amounts of private funding. Michelangelo was no starving artist; many of his benefactors chose to lavish him with riches. Why should modern trusts do any less?
I'm an engineer and as pragmatic as the next guy, but given a world without art and beauty, just give me the cancer -- what's the point?
BTW, if this was sarcasm and I missed it, I'm very happy and apologize in advance.
"They are a problem BUT without the unions, the teachers would be getting screwed and you'd only attract the least qualified."
No, you'd attract the best qualified. The unions oppose merit pay. Without the unions, you'd have education reform (the unions have opposed all meaningful efforts to improve education for years). Without unions, the teachers would have more money, actually, since they would be able to spend the massive dues amounts on something that meets their own interests.
"There's got to be a better middle ground between unions and the administration"
How about the interests of the students?
RMS was awarded the MacArthur award in 1990 for his contributions to the software field.
This quote is interesting:
"According to The Boston Globe, Stallman supports himself by working for two months a year as a $260-an-hour computer consultant."
this was in 1990! I'd give him an award just for getting that rate! It just goes to show you how much RMS gave up to bring the world Free Software. Most people have no idea.
Is it possible to become a genius. Your brain is a muscle, could you exercise it and improve it's performance?
demand for skill
available supply of skill
complexity of skill
competency at skill (performance)
quantity of skills subject to above conditions
As far as I know there is no significant shortage of teachers so there's no reason to raise salaries because of supply and demand. As far as complexity, teaching generally only requires certain certificates or minor degrees. Positions that require more advanced degrees do indeed pay more already. Competency is a person by person assessment, some are good and some are bad. As for quantity of applicable skills, some teachers do a lot of upgrading of their teaching skills and, as far as I know, do get paid more for it.
In short, the mechanisms seem to be in place to pay teachers properly. If teachers made a ton of money, everybody and their dog would get into teaching (since it doesn't require much in terms of specialized or advanced degrees). What you'd end up with is a ton of bad teachers in it for the money, and an oversupply of teachers which would drive their salaries down anyway.
In addition to this, I think the whole education system we have now is poorly designed. It is still essentially using the same model of a teacher teaching to a whole class during set periods. That model was based in times when the teacher had the only books available and taught from it. We're two generations past that now (printing press, computers). Some programs are making progress in personalized learning, but the primary model is still the same.
Probably more out of skew is 2 awards going to New Mexico residents (8.3% of the awards going to an area with 0.75% of the population).
Closer to skew is 4 awards (16.67%) going to California residents (10-11% of the population) and even more so if you count that as "West Coast" instead of just California.
When you deduct the two awards to international residents, that leaves 5 awards (20.83%) to be spread among the other 44 states. Those went to residents of Colorado, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.
Does that mean the remaining 39 states do not contain sufficient genius to warrant an award? Does that mean that we have an abnormally high concentration of genius in New York and Boston? While New York and Boston residents would probably like to think so, maybe put on big foam fingers and drunkenly shout "We're Number One", the rest of the nation would likely disagree.
Going through a portion of the historical listing of winners (last names starting with A-F), we find that out of 164 winners, 70 (42.7%) resided in the states of New York or Massachusets, and 30 (18.3% of total recipients, 62.5% of all New York state recipients) were in New York City. An additional 56 (34.1%) were in California, but those were more evenly spread out with only 11 (6.7% of total, 19.6% of state) being in Los Angeles.
So historically, based on that list, you have nearly 77% of all recipients being concentrated in 3 states and over 18% of them in just one city.
I'm sure the recipients of these grants are deserving, hard-working, geniuses in their own right. I just wonder if their geographic location is giving them an unfair advantage over geniuses in the rest of the U.S.
- Greg , though that still weights Cali's share of the awards above its share of the , just short of half of the recipients (11) are on the East Coast, 9 of them in New York or Massachusets (the other 2 are in Connecticut and Georgia).
Start a happiness pandemic
While I can agree with your basic premise, White is not cheap. Good White requires Titanium Oxide, and that my friend is expensive.
-C
I'm not a Democrat. I like some actions Democrats support. I'm not a Republican. I'm actually really pissed off at all the stupid shit they're doing right now in the name of political advantage at the cost of any ideals one might have had. I'm not a Libertarian. My message is, you can all bite me.
I am a small government type, maybe no government type, and what I see is that the Republicans are the new tax and spend queens. Just look at how much they're bleeding future tax money.
I forget what 8 was for.