More Musings

I'm thinking I need to get me one of them Nobel Peace Prizes.  You know they come with, like, a million dollars!  True, I haven't done much for the cause of world peace, but neither had President Obama when he won his.  Maybe if I stop capping on Canada.  It'll be hard, but I think I might be able to do it.

Monday Miscellany

Physician Heal Thyself--No, Really, HEAL THYSELF!

Dr. Ralph Steinman last week received the Nobel Prize in medicine for his ground-breaking work in immunology.

"But Dr. Steinman would never see the message nor learn of the prize. He died of pancreatic cancer on Friday, three days before the phone call from the Nobel committee. He had been battling the highly deadly disease for four years, using a treatment he devised to try to prolong his life, essentially turning his body into an extension of his research."

So basically he won the Nobel Prize for failing miserably.

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Are You Ready for Some Treason?

Hank Williams, Jr., was fired from his gig as America's official football-readier for his comments on Fox about President Obama.  The specific comment that got everyone all fired up was when he compared Obama's playing gold with House Speaker John Boehner to "Hitler playing gold with Netanyahu."  While obnoxious, this was not the worst comment that Williams made; after all, one could argue that Williams' comments were ambiguous: Perhaps Boehner was Hitler in the equation.

Far more serious, though, was the fact that Williams went on to state that Obama and Biden were "the enemy."  Think about that: Here is an American--a famous American--declaring on national television that the President--HIS President--is "the enemy."

Now, I hated George W. Bush, and I hated Dick Cheney--scratch that, I STILL hate Bush and Cheney.  But I would not go on record declaring myself their "enemy." Certainly if I were a public figure, I would not declare to a national audience, some of whom have a (pathetically misplaced) allegiance to me, that these men are "the" enemy.

When the next Jared Loughner guns down the next Gabrielle Giffords, let's hear Fox News again distance themselves from responsibility.

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A Rose by Any Other Name Is Still a Day Off from Work

It's an American tradition to rename holidays when the initial impetus for their celebration goes out of fashion.  Thus, Armistice Day became Veteran's Day when peace became gauche.  Decoration Day becaome Memorial Day around the time wallpaper went out of style.  And of course National Kitten-Drowning Day became Christmas.  Isn't it about time Columbus Day became National Immigration Day.  Or at least, National Celebration-of-Empire Day?

Of course, it's harder to change the name of a holiday named after a person, even when sordid truths about the honoree come to light.  OK, St. Patrick was a drunk, MLK liked the ladies, and George Washington was a cannibal.  It's just too hard to push those changes through.

Meantime, Back at the Solipsist. Plus, "I'll Take Nobel Prize Winners Nobody's Ever Heard of for $1,000, Alex."

Plinky prompts:

"You just got a magic tree! What does it grow?"

"Animal face-off: In a fight between a 14-year-old and a goat, who would win?"

"If you had an unlimited supply of Lego, what would you build?"

OK, we made up that last one. But what's really fascinating is that we did NOT make up the other two. The "magic tree" question is today's. And, yes, that middle question was an actual Plinky prompt, too. We would truly love to hear the thought process behind that one.

It is an interesting question. Sadly, though, a definitive answer would probably run afoul of any number of statutes against child endangerment. Or cruelty to goats.

Oh, by the way: Money and a really sweet shed.

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While awaiting the call from the Nobel committee, we found ourselves watching the clock, wondering what time the polls closed in Oslo. This got us thinking about time zones.

Consider: As we write this, it is 4:08 pm Pacific Standard Time (e.g., California). It is 7:08 pm Eastern Standard Time (e.g., New York), and it is 12:09 am Monday in London. (Oslo, by the way is one hour ahead of London.) But what about that five hour "hole" between New York and London? It occurred to us that this covers the lines of latitude in the Atlantic Ocean. So, at this moment (4:12 pm, PST), it is 10:12 pm for absolutely no one. All right, maybe there are some ships at sea, but they're probably synced up with Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), currently 11:14 pm. It seems that there are effectively no population centers that fall between the lines of latitude corresponding to one hour earlier than GMT.

We hereby claim possession of that time zone. We have completed today's post at 10:35 pm, Solipsist Meantime (sic).

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As a sort of follow-up to our post on President Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize--and because we know Sloppists enjoy funny names--we thought we would provide a brief list of some of the more obscure Nobel laureates.

Theodor Mommsen (Literature, 1902)

Bjornstjerne Bjornson (Literature, 1903)

Tobias Asser (Peace, 1911)

Fridtjof Nansen (Peace, 1922)

George H. Whipple (Medicine, 1934)

Frans Eemil Sillanpaa (Literature, 1939)

Polykarp Kusch (Physics, 1955)

Sir Cyril Hinshelwood (Chemistry, 1956)

Salvatore Quasimodo (Literature, 1959)

Tjalling C. Koopmans (Economics, 1975)

Klaus von Klitzing (Physics, 1985)

Imre Kertesz (Literature, 2002)

(Yes, the Solipsist is officially out of ideas.)