Sunday, October 11, 2009

Notes on the Nobel Committee

So, Obama has won the Nobel prize. Here are a couple of reactions I'd like to highlight:

I tried to get Oprah an Olympics and all they gave me was this lously meaningless medal. Warmongering, pro-torture, U.S. President inexplicably awarded a prize for "Peace"

It's the last thing he really needs.

It's a joke.

I'll point out that there's a big divide between the hard science-based Nobels and the awarding of the "soft" category (economics, politics) awards. Albert Einstein never won a Nobel prize for relativity. The science panel wasn't sure the theory was valid, so they awarded it to Einstein for his work on the photoelectric effect.

The "soft" awards tend to go for "trendy" subjects. Probably the worst overall call was giving the guys behind Long Term Capital Management a Nobel Prize in economics (they almost took down the entire global marketplace not long after). As many on the right have pointed out, giving the award to the likes of Yassir Arafat didn't exactly help out the award's prestige. To their credit, there was a brief time that it looked like the Oslo Accords could be the equivalent to the Camp David Accords. Not long after that, though, Arafat was back to blowing up school buses.

Many on the left screamed when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. "Irony is dead," was the quote. Christopher Hitchens has demolished anything that was left of his legacy (other than horrible, pointless bloodshed).

We'll see how this award turns out in a few years.

UPDATE- More to ponder:

Why Obama's Nobel Prize is Good for America. By Bill O'Reilly.

Why the Nobel Peace Prize Should Go to Nuclear Weapons

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