Thanks tdvance, Gillianren, Ivan Viehoff

I found that link this morning. Human nature trumps even scientists. Can't decide whether that's worrying or reassuring. Thanks again.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, whose early work in the 1960s was acclaimed for its wordplay and imagery and who later delved into childhood themes, won the 2008 Nobel prize for literature on Thursday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...49836B20081009

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

You know, I had forgotten about Cabibbo as well. Odd since these days the quark mixing matrix is usually referred to as the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. The so-called "Cabibbo angle" refers to one of the matirx elements. Cabibbo did the work for two quark generations and his was a two by two matrix. Kobayashi and Maskawa extended it to three families (adding bottom and top) and it became a three by three matrix.

Given this I think that Cabibbo has ample reason to be somewhat ticked off. Unfortunately, I think he was a victim of one of the Nobel's rules. A prize can only be split three ways. Since the comittee decided to recognize Nambu (whose initial symmetry breaking theory was seminal to the work of Cabibbo, Kobayashi, and Maskawa) that left only two slots. Cabibbo was the odd man out. It would be interesting to have been a fly on the wall at the Nobel comittee's meeting to see how they thrashed this one out.

In retrospect, perhaps they should have left out Nambu this go round and and given the prize to C, K, & M. The other option would have been to award Nambu alone and recognize the other three later. Given the importance of symmetry breaking to modern physics this may not have been a bad idea. And since Nambu is the oldest of the four it would be a good idea to get the prize to him before he dies and becomes ineligable (another one of the rules). In any event, I think the committee made a mistake on this one.

__________________
"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

That is odd. Must be especially galling to be denied on, what appears to be, not much more than a technicality. Thanks for that, and your link. Particle physics is difficult.

And:
I'd give it to the first one who climbed it! But then, I'm no theoretician (see above). I get your point though, thanks.

Apparently, I'm not the only one to be putting a book from our new laureate on hold at the library! No, I've never read any of his books; I'll let you know after I have.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

They do!
The 1997 Nobel in Chemistry, for "work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone"

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2008 to Martti Ahtisaari for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts. These efforts have contributed to a more peaceful world and to “fraternity between nations” in Alfred Nobel’s spirit.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/p...008/press.html

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

That's a heck of a name. Until I read the article, I had him pegged as being from a completely different continent. Go, Finland!

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Finnish is not an Indo-European language; perhaps that's why their names seem strange to you.

Nick

__________________
--
Nick Theodorakis

I know, but before I read the article, I thought he was Indian of some variety--which is full of Indo-European languages, I should think.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

FWIW, "Martti" is a typically Finnish name.

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Wow, Paul Krugman, the NY Times columnist (also a Princeton professor) won the Economics prize. How cool is that?

Wow, Paul Krugman, the NY Times columnist (also a Princeton professor) won the Economics prize. How cool is that?

So "cool" that my regard for the Nobel Prize committee is at an all time low. Arafat, Carter, Gore, and now Krugman.

Whilst he may be more famous as a columnist, I expect he won it from what he did as a Princeton professor. I observe a comment in his Wikipedia entry which suggests that it is a bit unusual for newspaper economics pundits to be respectable academics as the day job.

I would argue that they are awarding the fundamentals upon which the other work depends.
Environmental science would be nothing without chemistry, health would be much less without medicine, trying to address human needs without an understanding of economics gives you the Russian and Chinese disasters of the last century . . ..

__________________
‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Well, considering that Krugman has been a persistent and vocal critic of the Bush administration, the timing is rather uncanny.

From the Academy:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/e...008/press.html

__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

Two different committees--one's Swedish, the other Norwegian, right?

Trying to stick to objective facts rather than politics, The Economist newspaper recently ran a survey discovering that the great majority of professional economists in the USA found the economic policies of the present administration wanting.

But more generally, winners of the Nobel Prize for economics have not always demonstrated good economic judgment in real world situations. Krugman has been embarrassed by the fact that he did some consulting work for Enron, even though it only amounted to 4 days work. He freely admits to having been was entirely unaware what was going on in that company, but given that Enron was a matter of deception rather than incompetence, I don't really think he can be said to have been short-sighted.

More seriously, many economists would say the world's leading living economist is Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz, a man who has worked not just in academia in the "real world" for the World Bank and as chief economic advisor to the Clinton administration. In his book Globalization and its Discontents (2002), written for a popular rather than academic audience, he rightly points out the damage that the World Bank has done through its rigid adherence to certain policies that do not suit the situation of every country, most clearly illustrated by the much greater success Malaysia had in coping with the Asian crash of the end of the 90s by going against WB advice, as opposed to those that followed it (Thailand, Indonesia, etc). But he must now be rather embarrassed by the praise he gave in that book for the policies of former president Carlos Menem of Argentina and president Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia.

If you're talking about the Nobel Prize in Peace, yes. Norwegians pick the Peace Prize recipients, as per Nobel's instructions. The Economics non-Nobel Nobel is still Swedish.

Nick

__________________
--
Nick Theodorakis

Here's a real-world Krugman analysis that's apropos to BAUT:

The Theory of Interstellar Trade (PDF, half-megabyte, 1978, old, but even more timely now)

I haven't read it. It's economics.

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

Good find 01101001! You should read it. It's totally hilarious--yet strangely fascinating. . . .

There's been some embarrassments in other prizes too I was talking about the two different committees that chose Arafat, Carter, Gore, and now Krugman.

Perhaps You are right or at least come close.
But perhaps this is more belong to the past than to future?(reasonerhaps we allready have the "fundamentals", at least relating to available ressources for humans and their impact on environment? If we do not expect new fundamental changes in physics or chemistry will change our view of our situation perhaps entirely different fields could benefit us as well.)

Environmental science would be nothing without chemistry, health would be much less without medicine, trying to address human needs without an understanding of economics gives you the Russian and Chinese disasters of the last century . . ..[/QUOTE]
I am very sceptical about the "science" of economics. Is there any evidence it has solved more fundamental problems of society?(examples) I see no evidence that Russia or China did in particular "missed" economists. Evidence?

If there's any way that we're going to think our way out of the current, global, banking crisis, then such thinking is going to have to be based on economic theory, is it not? Perhaps you're suggesting that there are no good reasons for doing anything with respect to the current crisis?

Like any scientific inquiry, economics is an attempt to create an explanatory framework for phenomena in the world. Part of the problem is that some efforts have been hamstrung by false intitial assumptions. Another problem is that the atoms of economic theory are sentient and greedy.

__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

Har!
Thanks, 01101001, for a very humourous Krugman link at #51!

__________________
clear skies

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. CARL SAGAN

Mak: Pass the pepperoni please.
Fazor: "Hail, Bautainia! We pledge our hearts to thee! Science and woo, some babbling too, and astron-oh-meee!"
slang: And it made ash out of yew and tree.

The article is kind of disturbing, actually. I would have thought there would be an economic advantage to taking the trip as a captain owner-operator, versus the investor that stays home, but apparently that's not the case. There's no free lunch, even in interstellar trade.

There's also an economic proof against time-travel: if time travel were possible, then interest rates should be zero. Thus, because interest rates aren't zero . . . . wait a minute . . . .

Yes. The biggest example would probably be the moderation of the business cycle we enjoy now. John Maynard Keynes worked out how countries could get out of the great depression. Those economies that followed his advice, either intentionally or inadvertantly, experienced improvement. Milton Friedman took Keynes ideas and improved on them to help reduce the severity of normal recessions. We all benefit from this. Before this the economy suffered much more severe cycles of boom and bust.

Russia and China did not listen to the advice of economists when they set up Communisim. Their ideas came from political philosophers.

Note: People who appear on TV and tell you what stocks to buy are not economists.

You have some problems with timing, I think!
Keynes work were after Russian communist power, so they could not "listen to him" - no one could at that time!
Friedmann is even much laterm, and perhaps some economists made their works in response to marxism. The later is perhaps as much about economy as about "political philosophy" if not more.