Nobels 2012, etc.

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Voronwë the Faithful
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

As long as you are not going to get it, might as well give you something truly incomprehensible.

I was riding on the mayflower when I thought I spied some land
I yelled down to captain arab, I'll have ya understand,
Who came running to the deck and said boys forget the whale
We're goin' over yonder. cut the engines. change the sails.
Haul on that bowline we sang that melody,
Like all tough sailors do when they're far away at sea.

I think I'll call it america. I said as we hit land.
I took a deep breath. I fell down, I could not stand.
Captain arab he starting writing out some deeds
He said let's build us a fort and start buying the place with beads.
Just then a cop come down the street crazy as a loon
They throws us all in jail for carryin' harpoons.

Aw, me, I busted out don't even ask me how,
I went lookin' for some help, I walked past a guernsey cow
Who directed me down to the bowery slums
Where people carried signs around sayin' ban the bums.
I jumped right in line, sayin' I hope that I'm not late
When I realized I hadn't eaten for five days straight.

I went into a restaurant lookin' for the cook
I told him I was the editor of a famous etiquette book.
The waitress he was handsome and he wore a powder blue cape.
I ordered up some suzette, I said could you please make that crepe
Just then the whole kitchen exploded from boiling fat
Food was flyin' everywhere I left without my hat.

I didn't mean to be nosy but I went into a bank
To get some bail for arab the boys back in the tank.
They asked me for some collateral and I pulled down my pants.
They threw me in the alley, when up comes this girl from france
Who invited me to her house. I went, but she had a friend
Who knocked me out an' robbed my boots an' was I on the street again.

I rapped upon a house with a u.s. flag upon display.
I said can you please help me out, I got some friends down the way.
The man said get out of here I'll tear you limb from limb.
I said you know, they refused jesus, too. he said you're not him.
Get out of here before I break your bones. I ain't your pop.
I decided to have him arrested and went looking for a cop.

I ran right outside and hopped inside a cab
I went out the other door this english man said fab
As he saw me leap a hot dog stand and a chariot that stood
Parked across from a building advertising brotherhood.
I ran right through the front door like a hobo sailor does,
But it was just a funeral parlor and the man asked me who I was
I repeated that all my friends were in jail, with a sigh.
He gave me his card and said call me if they die.
I shook his hand and said goodbye and went back out on the street,
When a bowling ball came down the road and knocked me off my feet.
A pay phone was ringin' and it just about blew my mind
When I picked it up an' said hello, this foot came through the line

Well about this time I was fed up at trying to make a stab
At bringing back any help for my friends and captain arab.
I decided to flip a coin, like either heads or tails,
Would let me know if I should go back to ship or back to jail.
So I hocked my sailor's suit an' I got a coin to flip.
It came up tails, it rhymed with sails, so I made it back to the ship.

Well I got back and took the parking ticket off the mast.
I was ripping it to shreds when this coast guard boat went past.
They asked me my name and I said captain kidd
They believed me but they wanted to know exactly what I did
I said for the pope of eyruke I was employed
They let me go right away, they were very paranoid

Well the last I heard of arab he was stuck on the side of a whale
That was married to the deputy sheriff of the jail
But the funniest thing was as I was leavin' the bay
I saw three ships sailing and they were all headed my way
I asked the captain what his name was an' how come he didn't drive a truck
He said his name was Columbus an' I just said good luck
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by yovargas »

Frelga wrote:I hate to admit that I don't get it. :( On any level, literal, symbolic, or evocative. I'd say you had to be there, but River is younger than me.
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by JewelSong »

There was an incredible photographic exhibit illustrating "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" that I was privileged to see outside St. Martin in the Fields (in London) in 2009. The photos were enlarged and set up all around the church, along with the lyrics.

Here's a link to a video of the photos, with the song in the background. If you "don't get it" (and certainly if you do!) please watch this. Very powerful, even if Dylan isn't "your cup of tea."

http://www.hardrainproject.com/d
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by River »

Frelga wrote:I hate to admit that I don't get it. :( On any level, literal, symbolic, or evocative. I'd say you had to be there, but River is younger than me.
Yeah, um, "Shelter from the Storm" was released when my parents were in middle school...

Not all Nobel laureates in literature are universally loved and acclaimed. Being everyone's cup of tea isn't the point. Making an impact is.
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Frelga »

Making an impact seems to be more of a Peace prize criteria, no?

I think the problem I am having with Dylan is that his imagery is not visual. It's more internal report - I did this and I saw something that you probably know so I'm not describing and he was some quality. I have a very visual relationship with poetry.

Brodsky, a fellow laureate, can be pretty obscure, but he is also highly visual, with little flourishes like comparing a flying bird to a unibrow, that ground the abstract in the specific. I suppose an argument can be made that poetry meant to be performed to music is grounded by the melody.

On a tangent, poetry disguised as a song is something I grew up with, rooted in Soviet censorship. Means of publication were tightly controlled, down copy machines and typewriter tapes, so poets went back to the oral tradition.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by River »

Impact matters for all the Nobels, actually. What I do for a living would be quite literally impossible but for the findings some of the science prizes went for.
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

Dylan has finally responded to the honor.

Bob Dylan: 'The Nobel Prize Left Me Speechless'

If I had to chose a "favorite" Dylan lyric, it probably would be Desolation Row (I even dressed up as "Einstein disguised as Robin Hood, with his memories in a trunk" one Halloween, long ago). Although undoubtedly those who don't "get" Dylan will just be bewildered.

They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance

One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You Belong to Me I Believe”
And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place my friend
You better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she’s ’neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah’s great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They’re trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
“Have Mercy on His Soul”
They all play on pennywhistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They’re spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
“Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row”

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row


Of course, a song really should be heard to be appreciated. Here is Bob Weir and the Grateful Dead performing Desolation Row

"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by River »

Nobel week 2017!

The Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology has been awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Robash, and Michael W. Young for their work with circadian rhythms. Why's that important? Well, circadian rhythms are at the root of slee-wake cycles, eating habits, and all the hormonal and blood pressure changes you experience throughout the day.
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

And the Nobel Prize in Physics goes to ... Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology. The three were key to the first observation of gravitational waves in September 2015 (thus confirming Albert Einstein's theory of general relatively a century earlier).
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Primula Baggins »

That was quick. They used to wait a decade or two to make sure the work stood up. It was inconvenient, because the honoree sometimes died in the interim. (Thinking of Rosalind Franklin here, who would have shared the prize with Watson and Crick and Maurice Wilkins if she hadn't died four years earlier, at 37, from ovarian cancer.)
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Inanna »

Primula Baggins wrote:That was quick. They used to wait a decade or two to make sure the work stood up. It was inconvenient, because the honoree sometimes died in the interim. (Thinking of Rosalind Franklin here, who would have shared the prize with Watson and Crick and Maurice Wilkins if she hadn't died four years earlier, at 37, from ovarian cancer.)
Since the nobel is given to a max of 3, I often wonder if they wait for someone to bop off. :P
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Primula Baggins »

Was that the case then? I think there would have been a good argument for Franklin to win in place of Wilkins, as it was her work that actually elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule so that Watson and Crick could solve the rest of the puzzle.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Inanna »

We don't know. They never disclose why they chose specific 3 or not. My cousin's advisor was passed over in 2009 for the CHEM prize, and three other people got it in that field (which included one dude in his dissertation committee). The discussion was that he didn't continue taking the field forward, as compared to the other 3.
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by River »

I don't think they wait for someone to bop off. If they did, the prize for the discovery of ribozymes would never have been awarded. Instead they use some other mysterious metric. Not taking the field forward reeks of bullshit to me - Szostak bailed on telomere work so early on most of the RNA people my age never even knew he was into it in the first place. He shared a prize for it along with Blackburn and Greider.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Franklin had been willing to use her lead apron. Diffractometers weren't remotely driven back then so she was moving her crystals and her fibers around manually. She found the shielding cumbersome. She was also pretty bad at playing the politics that often surround who gets recognized for what in science so she may have been screwed even if she hadn't died.

None of that stops the structural biologists from honoring her as the true discoverer of the double helix. :D

Inanna, for some reason your post made me think of the ribosome prize so I double-checked and 2009 is the ribosome year. The name of that person who got screwed in 2009 is right on the tip of my mind but I can't place it. I know my thesis advisor knows him and was/is utterly furious that someone else got the credit instead.
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by River »

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson for their work incryo-electron microscopy.

[major nerdry]
Cryo-EM is a powerful technique for finding the structures of big molecules or molecular complexes (like a virus) that aren't compatible with x-ray crystallography. There was a lab a floor down from mine in grad school using it to look at big clumps of transcription factors bound up with a scaffold called mediator. The details aren't important; what is important is this was a huge mass of multiple proteins that was in low enough abundance that just preparing enough to crystallize would have taken an unfathomable amount of starting material and it was also big enough that I'm not sure it would have even worked (there's a reason the ribosome structure got a Nobel; it was the equivalent of being the first to summit Everest and live to tell the tale). One of the downsides to cryo-EM is you don't get the atom-by-atom resolution you'd see with a crystal structure. However, you will get a good idea of how the molecules are shaped and how those shapes can change, which can be huge in and of itself. For example, I've used cryo-EM data in my current job to gain insights in how the products I've been developing work. People have actually managed to take pictures of antibodies bound to viral particles and to me that's incredibly valuable. I can't necessarily tell from these structures which amino acid is contacting which, but I have a pretty sound idea of where the antibodies hit and how many are on the virus and that's really all I need.
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

Kazuo Ishiguro Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

A much less controversial choice than last year's! :whistle:

ETA: However, an interesting side note in that article:
In his 20s, he wanted to be a singer-songwriter, a pursuit he failed at, but one that later helped to shape his spare, first-person prose style. He has written lyrics for the American jazz singer Stacey Kent and still plays jazz and acoustic guitar, “no worse than the average amateur,” he said.
“My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously,” he told The Guardian in an interview. “ My hero was and still is Bob Dylan ... .
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Primula Baggins »

So he didn't mind waiting an extra year! :)
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

It's that time again.
The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to two researchers from the United States and Japan for advances in discovering how the body's immune system can fight off the scourge of cancer. The 9-million-kronor ($1.01 million) prize will be shared by James Allison of the University of Texas Austin and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University.

Their parallel work concerned proteins that act as brakes on the body's immune system and it constitutes "a landmark in our fight against cancer," said a statement from the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute, which selects winners of the annual prestigious award.

Allison studied a known protein and developed the concept into a new treatment approach, whereas Honjo discovered a new protein that also operated as a brake on immune cells.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nobel-priz ... demy-rape/
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded on Tuesday to Arthur Ashkin of the United States, Gérard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada for harnessing one of the most ineffable aspects of nature, pure light, into a mighty microscopic force. Dr. Strickland, a self-described “laser jock,” is only the third woman to win the physics prize, for work she did as a graduate student with Dr. Mourou.
Dr. Ashkin will receive half of the monetary prize, worth about $1 million; Dr. Mourou and Dr. Strickland will split the remainder.
The Nobel committee recognized the scientists for their work in transforming laser light into miniature tools. Dr. Ashkin invented “optical tweezers,” which use the pressure from a highly focused laser beam to manipulate microscopic objects, including living organisms such as viruses and bacteria.
Dr. Strickland and Dr. Mourou developed a method of generating high-intensity, ultrashort laser pulses, known as chirped pulse amplification. The work has had a wide range of real-world applications, enabling manufacturers to drill tiny, precise holes and allowing for the invention of Lasik eye surgery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/scie ... prize.html
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Re: Nobels 2012, etc.

Post by River »

The physics prize made me smile for a couple reasons. First, Strickland's the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 55 years and she got it for work she did as a student. It's exceedingly rare for anyone to get that kind of recognition for their graduate work. Second, I worked with an optical trap as a post-doc. There were lots of things about it that were a complete, unmitigated PITA, but I trapped particles with beams of light. It's a wild thing to see. I'm surprised Ashkin wasn't recognized sooner, actually. This was overdue. Maybe this means Marv Caruthers will finally get his tomorrow (hey, a girl can dream...)?

Also, Mourou and Strickland did their prize-winning work at my undergrad alma mater. :D
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