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Not just the peace prize. I've heard of astrophysicists describing the physics award as the "No Bell" prize after Jocelyn Bell Burnell. The peace prize was re

Not just the peace prize. I've heard of astrophysicists describing the physics award as the "No Bell" prize after Jocelyn Bell Burnell. The peace prize was really a joke from the start though, considering the origin of the money.

dagw 8y ago
The peace prize was really a joke from the start though, considering the origin of the money How do you figure? Is it unreasonable for a man to look at the damage his work has done on the world and wish to atone for it?
- cuboidGoat 8y ago
  There's a lady who thinks all that glitters is gold...
matklnz 8y ago
What's the origin of the money?
- nemof 8y ago
  alfred nobel - he invented the nobel peace prize because he didn't want his legacy to be being remembered as the inventor of dynamite and profiting from arms sales.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    This is why we need more ethics in engineering. If you spend all your life selling arms, you shouldn't be able to use your immense wealth just before you die to change your legacy. "Move fast and break thing". "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
  - ethelward 8y ago
    Like many technologies, dynamite is a two edged sword. All in all, I'd wage it had much more civilian applications than military ones. And Nobel invented it because of the large numbers of _civilian_ workers being killed or injured in nitroglycerin accidents. IMHO, smokeless powder is, compared to dynamite, _the_ military invention of the time.
leephillips 8y ago
There is a good case that five women have been denied the physics Prize because of their sex, including J.B.B. (although she herself disagrees). However, all the people who won did deserve it, which keeps the prize from being considered a joke, unlike literature (Bob Dylan) and peace (Obama).
- cuboidGoat 8y ago
  She may be extremely magnanimous about it, but didn't they give the prize for J.B.B's work to her supervisor who had told her that the signals were terrestrial? The peace prize was corrupt from the start. I am, for an atheist, a great believer in redemption, but I do not believe it comes from sticking your own name on a big cash prize for the good works of other people, hence the (unpopular it seems, I must have missed the 'No Stairway' sign) Led Zeppelin reference I made elsewhere in this thread. I am not sure about the Dylan thing, literature is a tricky thing to judge at the best of times and I am admittedly biased, as the second verse of Subterranean Homesick Blues is one of my favourite sentences; Maggie comes fleet-foot, face full of black soot, talking that the heat put plants in the bed, but the phones tapped anyway, Maggie said that many say they must bust in early May, orders from the D.A.
  - leephillips 8y ago
    "She may be extremely magnanimous about it, but didn't they give the prize for J.B.B's work to her supervisor who had told her that the signals were terrestrial?" Yup. She has said that she did not deserve the Prize because she was only a student. I don't understand her position, given the circumstances. But I wouldn't want to argue with her about it. Her name seems secure in the history of the subject.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > However, all the people who won did deserve it, which keeps the prize from being considered a joke, unlike literature (Bob Dylan) and peace (Obama) Bob Dylan is one of the most influential songwriters and lyricists of the last 50+ years. The idea that "literature" is solely contained in novels and poetry compilations was abandoned decades ago. Dylan is a poet, and he's made countless contributions to literature in his lifetime. If you're going to criticize the Nobel Prize in Literature, there are sufficient grounds to do so, given the current scandal within the Swedish Academy. But you can't claim that awarding Dylan somehow brought disrepute to the award itself.

dagw 8y ago

The peace prize was really a joke from the start though, considering the origin of the money How do you figure? Is it unreasonable for a man to look at the damage his work has done on the world and wish to atone for it?

cuboidGoat 8y ago
There's a lady who thinks all that glitters is gold...

matklnz 8y ago

What's the origin of the money?

nemof 8y ago
alfred nobel - he invented the nobel peace prize because he didn't want his legacy to be being remembered as the inventor of dynamite and profiting from arms sales.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  This is why we need more ethics in engineering. If you spend all your life selling arms, you shouldn't be able to use your immense wealth just before you die to change your legacy. "Move fast and break thing". "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
- ethelward 8y ago
  Like many technologies, dynamite is a two edged sword. All in all, I'd wage it had much more civilian applications than military ones. And Nobel invented it because of the large numbers of _civilian_ workers being killed or injured in nitroglycerin accidents. IMHO, smokeless powder is, compared to dynamite, _the_ military invention of the time.

leephillips 8y ago

There is a good case that five women have been denied the physics Prize because of their sex, including J.B.B. (although she herself disagrees). However, all the people who won did deserve it, which keeps the prize from being considered a joke, unlike literature (Bob Dylan) and peace (Obama).

cuboidGoat 8y ago
She may be extremely magnanimous about it, but didn't they give the prize for J.B.B's work to her supervisor who had told her that the signals were terrestrial? The peace prize was corrupt from the start. I am, for an atheist, a great believer in redemption, but I do not believe it comes from sticking your own name on a big cash prize for the good works of other people, hence the (unpopular it seems, I must have missed the 'No Stairway' sign) Led Zeppelin reference I made elsewhere in this thread. I am not sure about the Dylan thing, literature is a tricky thing to judge at the best of times and I am admittedly biased, as the second verse of Subterranean Homesick Blues is one of my favourite sentences; Maggie comes fleet-foot, face full of black soot, talking that the heat put plants in the bed, but the phones tapped anyway, Maggie said that many say they must bust in early May, orders from the D.A.
- leephillips 8y ago
  "She may be extremely magnanimous about it, but didn't they give the prize for J.B.B's work to her supervisor who had told her that the signals were terrestrial?" Yup. She has said that she did not deserve the Prize because she was only a student. I don't understand her position, given the circumstances. But I wouldn't want to argue with her about it. Her name seems secure in the history of the subject.
chimeracoder 8y ago
> However, all the people who won did deserve it, which keeps the prize from being considered a joke, unlike literature (Bob Dylan) and peace (Obama) Bob Dylan is one of the most influential songwriters and lyricists of the last 50+ years. The idea that "literature" is solely contained in novels and poetry compilations was abandoned decades ago. Dylan is a poet, and he's made countless contributions to literature in his lifetime. If you're going to criticize the Nobel Prize in Literature, there are sufficient grounds to do so, given the current scandal within the Swedish Academy. But you can't claim that awarding Dylan somehow brought disrepute to the award itself.