On the Nobel Prize system, that is.
I mean, it's bad enough they don't have anything for mathematicians.
When I was in college, my roommate's father was a chemist. Whether he ever had a chance at a Nobel prize I never knew, but we always watched the Nobel news carefully because he certainly knew many fellow chemists who did. In the process, I learned that there was often a signficant time lag involved, the work for which the prize was given having been done many years earlier. When I thought about it, that made sense: one never knows the true impact of a discovery or an action until one can look back on it from a more distant perspective.
But now we have the Nobel Peace Prize given, not for actions proved peace-promoting from the perspective of history, but to encourage actions that might, maybe, possibly, we hope will do so?
For once, words fail me. To his credit, I hear President Obama was surprised. It would be greater credit if he refused the honor on the grounds that he doesn't deserve it, even if he hopes to someday. But that may be too much to expect of any human being, let alone a politician.President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his nascent initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and replace unilateral American action with international diplomacy and cooperation.
I've always wanted to write a book. Can I get in line for the Nobel Prize for literature?
Sure. You can even get in front of me. I can claim I've wanted to write a book for longer than you have, but the whole Nobel Prize collection experience sounds so much not like my kind of thing, anyway....
I'm not sure if accepting a Nobel Prize does in fact make meeting Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden possible, but if it does, I'm all for collecting one. I was born on the same day as her and I'd find it interesting to meet her for that spurious reason alone.
