Worthless Nobel Prize

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-2007
Worthless Nobel Prize
72
Mon, 10-13-2008 - 8:07am
The Nobel Prize is officially a leftist propaganda tool. After giving the award to such luminaries as Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore, a Nobel Prize has now been given to NY TImes columnist Paul Krugman. Not that I had much respect for the award before, but now, I think it is completely worthless.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-12-2008
Mon, 10-13-2008 - 10:46pm
And no one 'forced' banks to make loans without documentation, yet they did. If you are going to blame one side you have to accept that the other side is culpable also. The banks could have declined the loans, happens everyday.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
Mon, 10-13-2008 - 10:52pm
So true...the consumers couldn't have taken out those types of loans if those types of loans didn't exist in the first place.

Sopal

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-12-2008
Mon, 10-13-2008 - 10:59pm
There were loans that went as high as 125% of the sale price - what were the buyers thinking - but more importantly what were the banks thinking? How many credit card offers do you get every day? I remember shortly after my divorce I paid off my credit cards and called to cancel them citing the fact that I did not have a job and had very little income, the banks hounded me to keep the cards and kept increasing my credit limit. So if I had tons of credit card debt today, which thankfully I don't because I don't use the cards, who would be most 'at fault' me or the banks who hounded and hounded and hounded me to keep the cards? Shouldn't they share some of the blame?
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Mon, 10-13-2008 - 11:05pm

I don't have much problem with Watson, though I think Crick was getting fairly looney-tunes later on in life.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 4:50am

I remember (way back in the dinosaur age :-)) when a professor at Berkeley got the Chemistry prize. His first comment was something to the effect that while it was a nice honor and all, and the money was great, the real thrill was that he would finally get the special Nobel Laureate parking ticket that would allow him to park on campus :-).

I've had a very hard time with Watson for years. I once attend a conference on molecular biology and ethics, which he chaired. His arrogance about the infallibility of scientists was absolutely breathtaking: something along the lines of "don't dare regulate anything we do and or any way the information may be used, we scientists know what we are doing!" This was in a panel discussing the implications for health insurance coverage of discovery of genetic information about diseases. Add that to his absolutely shameful treatment of Franklin over the years and his quite recent remarks to the effect of being “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2677098.ece

and I have to admit that I find him a pretty nasty piece of work. Those recent remarks cost him his job in the end, but he absolutely deserved the Nobel prize for his work with DNA.

Franklin did get screwed, but not really intentionally. The academic prizes can not be awarded posthumously.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2004
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 9:47am

You've fallen into the same trap as the OP.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-11-1999
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 10:01am
Carter's prize may very well have been a make-up, since this failed president was the driving force behind the Egypt/Israeli peace treaty, one of the most significant accomplishments of the late 20th century.

dablacksox


Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 10:01am

<< Is it possible to have socialist elitists?>>

LOL!

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 10:12am

<>

I'd like to know what policies/nations from abroad are good in your opinion. This is something I've wondered about before. Are there countries with which American Conservatives are in synch with. I deal with Canada being labelled Socialist on a regular basis around here (because we have universal healthcare)....Since the US is the only advanced western nation without some form of universal health care....and much of Europe is more "leftist" and "socialist" than Canada, I've often wondered if there WAS a country that much of Middle America does not deride or whose policies they cannot be convinced to fear. I'm REALLY curious to know.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2004
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 11:08am

You really think Americans know anything about the domestic (or even foreign) policies of Sarkozy, Merkel, Berlusconi, or any other European leader?


Much (most) of middle America has no clue about the policies of other countries, especially those in Europe.

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