We still have lots of peace congresses, even post WW2, and they still produce results. We don’t call them that anymore – we call them “summit meetings” or something – but Nobel would have recognised things like, inter alia, the SALT, INF, CTB and CFE talks and the Camp David summit as peace congresses.

In short, this Nobel, like the one to El Baradei, should be seen as a rap over the knuckles for the Bush administration, and as such is well deserved.

Al Gore and Doris Lessing. The revolution is here.

[parts previously posted at the Sideshow]

True enough.

It’d be nice to see a future award that recognized the fruitful interplay of complex computational models and creative empirical testing that seems to characterize much of recent climate science (at least, so it seems given my frail grasp of even the gross simplifications offered by experts in the field), but it seems as if it might fit slightly weirdly in the current categories, encompassing as it does applied mathematics and computational modeling, chemistry, physics, ecology, natural history—and a plethora of subfields in each of these areas.

Digging back a few years, Mario Molina, Paul Crutzen, and Sherwood Rowland won the 1995 prize in chemistry for their work in atmospheric chemistry, specifically: the formation and decomposition of atmospheric ozone – arguably an award made with clear recognition of a critical environmental issue.

“John Quiggin talking about ‘bubbles of delusion’ pretty much overwhelms any sensitivity to irony one might have had left after that 3rd graf.”

I think that does describe a position. But of course it’s not your position, it’s the position of an indefinite “one”. According to you, that is… or maybe it’s according to some indefinite “one”, who happens to be a definite you.

Now, back to treasonous facts.

Since I never stated a position, I assume you are referring to the one you’d really like me to hold.

Seems to me the nobels would work better these days if the scientific categories could somehow be changed (no doubt in clear violation of Nobel’s will) to reflect contemporary trends, i.e. distinguishing physics and chemistry seems a bit strained on the one side, and separating chemistry and important areas of (often medical-related) biology seems similarly strained, on the other.

Better, I’d think, to have something like ‘physical sciences’, ‘life sciences’, and maybe ‘human sciences’ which could include medical, behavioural and social sciences (which might at least partially satisfy the curmudgeonly academy critics of the economics memorial prize – which is now more of a social/behavioural sciences prize anyway).

http://www.counterpunch.org/