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Physics Nobel Won By Laser Wizardry -- Laureates Include First Woman in 55 Years (nature.com)
A trio of laser scientists have won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work using intense beams to capture superfast processes and to manipulate tiny objects. From a report: The laureates include Donna Strickland, who is the first woman to win the award in 55 years. Strickland, at the University of Waterloo, Canada, will share half the 9 million Swedish krona (US$1 million) prize with her former supervisor, Gerard Mourou, from the Ecole Polytechnique, in Palaiseau, France. The other half of the prize went to Arthur Ashkin, of Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey.
Strickland and Mourou pioneered a way to produce the shortest, most intense pulses of light ever created, which are now used throughout science to unravel processes that previously appeared instantaneous, such as the motion of electrons within atoms, as well as in laser-eye surgery. Ashkin won the prize for his pioneering development of 'optical tweezers', beams of laser light that can grab and control microscopic objects such as viruses and cells. Further reading: The Guardian.
Strickland and Mourou pioneered a way to produce the shortest, most intense pulses of light ever created, which are now used throughout science to unravel processes that previously appeared instantaneous, such as the motion of electrons within atoms, as well as in laser-eye surgery. Ashkin won the prize for his pioneering development of 'optical tweezers', beams of laser light that can grab and control microscopic objects such as viruses and cells. Further reading: The Guardian.
"Gender doesn't matter! Everyone is exactly the same as everyone else!"
Yet we're constantly having "I'm a woman therefore my accomplishments are special!"
If gender doesn't matter, why is it constantly thrown in our faces?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Allow me to continue this list.
Henry Kissinger - For ending a war he started ... well, basically for keeping its members from killing each other for over 60 years, this is indeed impressive considering their history, I give 'em that.
The EU - For
Al Gore - For producing a lot of hot air that allegedly cools the planet
Jimmy Carter - For trying. Really hard.
United Nations - For wrapping the global big players in so much red tape that they can't wage war sensibly anymore.
David Trimble and John Hume - For not shooting each other anymore. As a side note, anyone available for starting a civil war we could then end? I'm asking for a friend.
International Campaign to Ban Landmines - For making landmines magically disappear. Except the few that make people disappear instead every year.
Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat - For bringing peace to the middle east. Just in case anyone was still wondering whether this Prize is a joke.
Mikhail Gorbachev - Mostly for not being Josef Stalin
United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces - Basically for being the good natured idiot that gets into the struggle of two bullies, with the express intention that they should kick the idiot instead of each other.
Lech Wasa - For founding a union, but being considerate enough to do it in a country we do NOT like.
Mother Teresa - For making poverty and pain something to celebrate
Menachem Begin and Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat - See Peres/Rabin/Arafat.
Andrei Sakharov - For pissing off the Commies
Willy Brandt - For not wanting East Germany back.
International Labour Organization - Fuck knows why
Martin Luther King, Jr. - For being the peaceful nig.... Unlike that Malcolm guy we didn't like.
George C. Marshall - For finding a way to sell US goods and calling it aid
Carlos Saavedra Lamas - For ending a war nobody gave a fuck about. But find someone else who gave a fuck about peace in 1936
Carl von Ossietzky - For not being a Nazi
And a few more I didn't find anything to write about.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.