Things I Saw Today...

[elfs]

Iowa city has stopped an old-fashioned book burning, pointing out that there's a burn-ban going on within the city and that it's illegal to transport materials across city lines specifically to burn them-- air quality controls are in force.

A city fire inspector suggested shredding the offending CD's, videos, books, and clothing, but the Reverend Scott Breedlove said "that didn't seem biblical."

Yeah.

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Laurie Anderson just gets cooler. While writing wildly eclectic and satisfying performance poetry with music and weird special effects-- not to mention a decent rock album now and then and providing vocals for Jean Michel Jarre's latest laser lightshow-- she now officially becomes NASA's Artist in Residence Rockin'!

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Saw this on Fleshbot this morning: Asia Carerra, the one-time porn starlet (who's still pretty hot, and doing no-sex cameos in high-end porn movies now and then) has built her own casemod. How's that for a geeky thing to admire?

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Okay, I don't know how this works either. Here's the perfect t-shirt fold, in two moves. Origami for homemakers. Weird.

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Interesting. Did you know that the Nobel Prize for Economics is not really a Nobel Prize? I didn't either. The official name is "The Bank of Sweden Prize for Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel", and the Bank of Sweden sponsors the award, paying the Nobel Foundation to administer it and choose a recipient. The Bank issues the award during the whole annual Nobel hullabaloo, thus blurring the distinction between "real Nobel prizes" and "prizes in memory of Alfred Nobel." The whole thing seems to have been a gambit-- and a successful one so far-- at ranking economics more like a "real science" in people's minds.

Comments

Nobel prizes and prizes in memory of Alfred Nobel.

[blaisepascal]

While it's true that the Economics prize was a gambit to attach some of the allure of Nobel prizes to economics, I wouldn't say that it makes it a "real science". After all, two of the "real Nobel" prizes are in Literature and Peace, two disciplines (if you can call peace a "discipline") which are hardly scientific.

The truth of the matter isn't so much that the Nobel Foundation refuse to award more prizes (in Economics, or Mathematics, or Sociology, or whatever) because they don't agree with the merits of such prizes, but that Alfred Nobel made no provisions in his will for adding prizes. The Nobel prizes are funded out of the investment income on his original bequest. The will said the money should be used for annual prizes in specific categories, and so the Foundation can't pay out more money than that.

That's why the Bank of Sweden sponsors the "Bank of Sweden Prize for Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel".

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3887493.stm

[juuro.livejournal.com]

Although I disapprove of book-burning, or any text-burning for that matter, in general, there is something endearing about the gentleman reported here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/gothwalk/337864.html .

- o -

I most recently heard that Nobel prize thing at Stockholm City Hall, the venue of the award banquet. Have you had someone travelling in Scandinavia recently?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

No, not recently. I think it's some sort of reminder meme: "The Nobel Prize in Economics isn't really a Nobel prize." It's just going around.

Thanks for linking to that folding video.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

You just got me to chew up a good half hour still-framing through that with a t-shirt by my computer to figure out how that works. *laughs*

It's pretty simple, now that I've done it a few times. The trick to it is before you pull the center-third spot (the first one grabbed in the video) out of the pocket formed by the rest of the shirt wrapped around that hand, making sure the sleeve (if any) is draped correctly, which involves keeping momentum with the initial fold-over, judging from the few times I've done it so far.

The other 'trick' which is really just a speed-up to avoid fumbling the shirt later, is to add the half-twist before picking up the waist-hem in the shoulder-hem bundle, so the correct surfaces are touching for when you 'unwrap' the shirt into the folded package format.

Definately a link I'm going to pass around though, that video is very nifty.