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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.'"
So I guess my shell-script "thinkgeek fortune grabber" wouldn't cut it.
Esoteric reference.
a short story writer celebrating the complexity of life's most ordinary moments (Lydia Davis
A blog like any other.
Why not me? I am not going to make it in my profession.
" a short story writer celebrating the complexity of life's most ordinary moments (Lydia Davis)"
Up next. A short-story writer celebrates the complexities of spending 500,000.00
What exactly does "a blacksmith exploring the expressive qualities of metal" mean? Does he hammer the iron until it cries?
There is no spoon or sig.
It's not a grant if there are no strings attached, it's an entitlement.
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, teach teachers.
Those who can't teach teachers, administrate
Those who can't administrate are on the school board.
Just think how much iron $500,000 will buy!
OK, I want to teach in that district. Are the teachers making six figures? Where I work, I make less money every year, if you include the cost of my tuition for staying certified. I want to meet these rich teachers and learn their secrets.
You don't apply ?? I still don't know how the people are found for the grant ?
Bit of Article.....
Several hundred nominators assist the Foundation in identifying people who should be considered for a MacArthur Fellowship. Nominators, who are appointed each year and serve anonymously, are chosen from many fields of endeavor and challenged to identify people who demonstrate exceptional creativity and promise. A 12-member Selection Committee, whose members also serve anonymously, meets regularly throughout the year to review nominee files, narrow the list, and make final recommendations to the Foundation's Board of Directors. Typically, between 20 and 25 Fellows are selected each year.
This grant sounds to me like some people that have no clue of what to do with their money.
There are probably real researchers studying cancer or some biotech that need the money.
I don't get it.
They turn me down for a Nobel.
Then they turn me down for an Ig Nobel.
Now, the Genius Grant passes me over.
Why don't I get some recognition for my first-hand studies on the effects of sleep deprivation due to intense Slashdot reading? Dear Lord, WHY???
One of the winners, Erik Demaine, is 22 and is already a CS professor at MIT with a gigantic publication list. I find this both inspiring and profoundly demoralizing. He'd better not be getting laid more than me too.
I, for one, welcome our genius overlords.
Which makes me think of how much subjectivity there is to the notion of "worthwhile pursuits" versus "worthless pursuits."
Sometimes useful things come out of "useless" research.
And sometimes the "crackpots" like Velikovsky serve an important function: to make us reflect on how we've arrived at our current models of the universe, how to make those models more detailed and thorough, and how to articulate them to fellow scientists and laypeople alike.
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.
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?!
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
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.
I mean, the guy has a Tetris Award, for fucks sake--you know how that drives the ladies wild. Plus, his beard is pretty far onto the "eww, gross" side of the facial-hair spectrum; no woman can resist jowl-pubes.
is it possible that the teachers aren't under paid then, but rather the doctors and lawyers are over paid?
I see your point about the unions. They are a problem BUT without the unions, the teachers would be getting screwed and you'd only attract the least qualified. There's got to be a better middle ground between unions and the administration.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
...is that the decision making process for these awards includes a swimsuit competition.
Which still doesn't help me. Blech.
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?
What???
where, in 1968, were teachers paid the same as doctors?
maybe senior tenured university profs. maybe.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
10+ years ago, there was a short-lied show on Fox named "Flying Blind". The girlfriend of the min character had a roommate who just wandered around in a bathrobe, apparently unemployed, but always had money for stuff...
About halfway through the second season, the main characted asked, "Just what do you DO, anyway?"
Bathrobe guy: "I have a Genius Grant..."
Main Character: "You? But you're not a genius!"
Bathrobe guy: "I was the night I slept with the lady who gives out the grants..."
Teachers are the ONE proffesion, other than Nurses and Public servents such as Police and fire fighters who can never get paid enough.
there is no problem, and BTW, if Teachers did make as much that you say tehy are over paid, there would not be problems with teacher shortages, especialy in Math, Special ed, etc.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The problem with the Union is that they tend want pay based on seniority rather than how well you perform your job, so an ace teacher makes the same as the dead wood who has been teaching just as long.
Basically any Union exists for these reasons:
1) To get Better Pay and Benefits for its members
2) Better Working conditions, including getting reduced workloads
3) Better Job Security, including protecting the jobs of incompetant boobs.
I'm not anti-union, but most of the items on the list are not really in-sync with improving the quality of education. It just annoys me when the NEA runs ads bragging about how they care about the quality of our kids education. No... you are for the teachers, not the kids, let's be honest here. Just because the NEA or other union opposes certain reforms does not mean the reform is bad for education, if the union opposes it, it's most likely because they perceive it to be increasing the workload for teachers, or weakening their (the union's) power. Which is fine, that's what they are supposed to do. I just wish more people would see that for what it is, and not some noble act of fighting FOR their kids' best educational interest.
Paying the good teachers extra would be a good start, it would give other teachers incentive to perform better. But the unions are against it, basically because it's too arbitrary for them. Unions need clearly defined workplace rules and pay scales, when the administration can start making arbitrary decisions, the Union loses some of its power.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
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.
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
Uh, Try Staten Island, NY (Ramones)
..........FULL STOP.
Only in a libertarian "what the market will bear" aspect, not in a "value of what is produced" aspect. Teachers will work for less if they have no other choices or if they honestly care about the children, that doesn't mean that they're getting overpaid, it might mean that they're getting taken advantage of.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Blinn, James F.
Demaine, Erik
Holland, John H.
Jurafsky, Daniel
Rus, Daniela
Shor, Peter
Sims, Karl
Stallman, Richard
Winfree, Erik
Wolfram, Stephen
The MacArthur Foundation site has the fellows sorted by field. These eleven were the ones they classed under "Computer Science".
meditate and memorize. I did it once. Problem is you'll start babeling to yourself nonstop in a stream-of-conscious sort of way recalling all sorts of details of your own life like the time I was walking alone as a little kid along down the road to see the deep river come unfolded through the eye of an apple tree with all sorts of grasshoppers floating in my direction to strange copper land of slivery gold and rosy flowers growing high among the clouds of the settling sun with its sidulent snaky path pulling me down under the fidged hoary water with my ghostly siblings exhaling their last oxygen crys from a body dragged down with current back scaping rocks head over tumbling heals to a far shore where a dog licks the putrid fishy corpse!
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.
Um, Lydia Davis is fantastically good writer. Sienfeld is a sitcom. He got paid more, but that's because he works in a high-paying profession. Apart from a handful, writers have never ever been paid much, and hardly ever according to their worth. I am happy for her, and can think of few writers as deserving. She has created something far more substantial than a few good gags (and I am a big Sienfeld fan).
First you say: If you don't like the pay as a teacher, get out of the profession. Go find something for which the pay is higher.
Then you complain about teacher quality. Well if you pay people poorly, it is no wonder good people leave.
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.
Actually, you also hear it from military people and other government workers. In countries with socialized medicine you hear it alot from nurses The reason is simple: people who work for the government do not have salaries that are set by the market. Rather they are set through negotiations with their "bosses", the public at large. Their whining is more or less the same as you asking your boss for a raise (just that the process is very indirect). If the public comes to believe that teachers are underpaid, they will vote for politicians who promise to pay them more.
Unlike, say, janitors, teachers can also make a plausible argument that poor pay leads to poor education which will lead to a poor economy down the road.
Doctors and lawyers don't just "whine" about their pay (as was suggested earlier in this thread). They have lobbied for immigration restrictions on professionals which artificially keep their pay scales higher, along with our costs for their services
. ht m
http://www.cepr.net/professional_protectionists