nobel prize

Daily News Round Up: Dignity Goes to the Dogs

Monday, October 13th, 2008


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Hard times clearly call for puppies: Proving that the nation would rather watch CGI-animated chihuahuas dressed in ridiculous outfits than bloated actors Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, Beverly Hills Chihuahua was once again top dog at the Box Office, pulling in $17 million on its second weekend, beating out the superstar war action flick, Body of Lies, directed by Ridley Scott. This one’s DOA. (Sorry, couldn’t help it.)

The Dow is up… for now: Spurred by an injection of money from global powers, Britain, France, Germany, and other major European countries, the Dow is riding high—up nearly 600 points. Oil prices, after a big drop, are inching up, $3.56 a barrel.

He’s a winner: New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, perennial thorn in conservatives side, won the Nobel prize in economics for his writing about how small economies effect international trade patterns. The author of a blog called “Conscience of a Liberal” is staunchly against a John McCain presidency. He’s quoted as saying McCain is more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago.

The Taliban is back:
More clashes at the Pakistani/Afghani border between the Taliban and pro-government forces have killed 51 people, making it more urgent than ever to deal with Afghanistan.

North Korea is losing their edge: The country that was once determined by Bush to be in the Axis of Evil, seems to be going soft. The country is lifting a ban on U.N. inspections of the plutioniom plant it used for an atomic test blast. The United States removed the sounctry from its list of states sponsoring terrorism last week, so North Korea responded by resuming the dismantling of the atomic program.

Barack Obama’s on the money: The Democratic presidential candidate put forth a few more economic proposals today, calling for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures, a two-year tax break for businesses that create jobs, and proposed that people should be able to withdraw up to $10,000 from their retirement accounts without penalty for the next two years.

Big Brown retires: The venerable racing horse, Big Brown, suffered an intractable injury which effectively ended his successful racing career, which included wins at the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. The injury to his foot, means that the horse will be retired to breeding.

Nobel Prize Committee Members Not Always Noble

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

October marks the advent of autumn* and the approach of Halloween. But since 1901, it’s also heralded the annual announcement of Nobel Prize winners.

The five categories under the prize umbrella are those of peace, chemistry, physics, physiology and medicine and literature.

This year, Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday, the Nobel committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine to French researchers Luc Montagnier, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and German scientist Harold zur Hausen.

The former are credited with discovering the human strain of the AIDS virus, the latter with proving the “papilloma virus causes cervical cancer.”

Controversy has often surrounded the Nobel Prize and its originator, Swedish dynamite creator Alfred Nobel, and this year’s share centers around two of the aforementioned physiology and medicine winners.

(more…)

Citizen Al

Friday, October 12th, 2007

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He’s a fat and happy Nobel winner and he should never run for office again.

Al Gore is clearly really good at being a human on a mission to save the planet but, for most of the same reasons he’s good at that, he is bad at being a presidential candidate. He won but lost the election in 2000 the same way he won but lost all of his debates with Bush. Impossible but true. On the matter of global warming and staving off climactic apocalypse, he is the right messenger: an authoritative populist translator of scientific theory, didactic but with reason, stuffy but in a professorial way that suits the topic. He is at ease on the slide-show circuit in a way he never was on the stump, despite his long and overwhelmingly successful political career. He looks right with his charts and graphs. His conviction in the worthiness of the global-warming mission shines through. He seemed by comparison basically disgusted to be having to debate taxes and abortion and so on with men like Bush. It was beneath him, as it would be beneath most people with an education and a sense of personal dignity. He couldn’t do it and that turned people off. Gore is now who he was meant to be. It’s uplifting to see a grown man so publicly come into his own. What is more, he has become a greater and more valuable ambassador for his country than he ever was as a politician. Congratulations to Al Gore.

Now everyone stop speculating on his political future. Stop asking him to run for president. We need him to continue to just be Al— big eater, author, happy champion of the planet and Nobel Peace Prize winner!