Meet the New Nobility

The Nobel prizes, perhaps the greatest honors given out by mankind, have been announced, and there are some surprises and some interesting stories. Here’s who’s getting them this year:

Physics: Yoichiro Nambu (b. Tokyo, currently at the Fermi Institute in Chicago), for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics. Also, Makoto Kobayashi & Toshihide Maskawa (KEK in Kyoto), for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature. The Irish news service RTE reported that “They laid the theoretical foundations for modern understanding of how the laws of physics differ for matter and anti-matter.”

Medicine: The prize went to three researchers crediting with discovering important viruses, this allowing for their effective treatment. The honorees are Harald zur Hausen (German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg) for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer, and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi & Luc Montaignier (Institut Pasteur, Paris) for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus. Definitely deserved all around.

Chemistry: Three Americans: Osamu Shimomura (born in Japan), Martin Chalfie, & Roger Tsien, received the prize for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP. Remember those pictures of the glowing cats? Yeah, that was these guys. I want a glowing cat. It was reportedly discovered in jellyfish, then researchers discovered they could use it as a study marker.

Literature: I personally think the literature branch is completely out of touch with reality. I’m not usually nationalist, but the head of the committee said the other day that there’s “nothing of value” coming out of America right now. Uh-huh. The prize this year went to a French writer I’ve never heard of, Jean Marie Le-Clezio, "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

Peace: Probably the most prestigious prize goes this year to the former President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari. He has apparently been a peace moderator everywhere from Kosovo to Indonesia’s Aceh Province, though I had never heard of his laudable efforts before now. Most Americans have only heard of the current Finnish president, a woman who Conan O’Brien supported because he thought she looked like him. Um…

The Economics prize will be announced Monday. Of course, the Nobel prizes were started by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. He decided that his invention was too violent and decided to do something positive with his fortune in his will. In addition to the prestige, winners get oodles of cash. The prizes are awarded in Stockholm, except for Peace, which is awarded separately in Oslo, for whatever reason.

TechWatch: Flexible Video Screen

Scientists at Sony Corp., working with the Max Planck Institute in Germany, have apparently invented a paper-thin, flexible video screen (i.e. you can crumple it up and uncrumple it and then watch TV on it). The screen is less than a millimeter thick, and is made up of organic molecules that produce an image by "transmitting light in all directions at once." Researchers told The Journal of Physics that there are virtually no size limitations to the technology, could be produced on the cheap in comparison to today's LCD screens, and has an extremely low energy requirement. Of course, my mind immediately went to the video paper stuff seen in, well, lots and lots of Sci-Fi, from "Firefly" to Minority Report. Here it is!

Positives: The applications are insane. Yes, we can have flexible laptops that fit into our pocket. But it doesn't stop there! How about video T-shirts? You know you want one. Or blankets that double as TV screens?

Negatives: Well, based on the pics that were released to the media, the technology looks very early-stage to me, so don't start lining up for one now. Also, How does it uncrumple without still being wrinkled? You'd have a wrinkly screen!

Will it Catch On?: Oh, totally. I want my video newspaper from Minority Report, and I want it now.

Bits: Everything Sucks Edition

-The bailout approved by Congress last week appears to have done little in the short term to stop the current worldwide financial spiral, though expecting it to have done so may have been unreasonable. Stock markets around the world went sharply downhill Monday. In the US, the Dow Jones dropped below 10000 for the first time in years. In Iceland, the currency was down 7% and the economy appears to be on the verge of collapse. The Frankfurt markets hit the skids after the German government had to perform its own bailout of real estate firms. Russian stock indexes lost over 15% of their value. And so on.

-Here you can find an easy step-by-step process to construct your own "Egg of Time." "Look into its time vortex, and see all that was, and all that will be." Yes.

-Time has a list of words the dictionary is trying to get rid of to make room for 2,000 new words. I am a word geek, and had not heard of any of these.

-New polls from various sources have shown Sen. Barack Obama up in pretty much every swing state, including Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, and New Mexico. However, it's still a month until the election, and we have discussed the accuracy of polls on here before.

-Meanwhile, Cracked.com has come up with a list of 5 presidential elections that were dumber than this one (somehow). It's actually a really good read. I particularly like the caption under the pic of John Quincy Adams: "I'll kill your wife. I don't even care."

-In response to what it says is widespread piracy, Warner Bros. is trying a new tack in Korea... it's going to start releasing its movies online before they hit DVD. How that will help, I'm not totally sure, but it makes sense in other ways.

-The Tampa Bay Rays are in baseball's final four. Hell has told us that it will take more than this for it to freeze over. Hell is just stubborn that way. In other sports news, the Ferocious Walruses fantasy football team remains undefeated. Because I know you've been hanging on every play.

Someone Took "Advance Wars" Too Seriously

The big news from the gaming world this week wasn't the release of the latest big game. It was the real-life murder of one Matthew Pyke, a student at Nottingham Trent University in England. Pyke, age 20, was heavily involved with the community surrounding Nintendo's Advance Wars, a turn-based war tactics game for the video game company's hand-held Advance platform. Pyke ran a strategy website for the game with his girlfriend, as well as writing Advance Wars fanfiction and regularly posting to forums devoted to the game. Authorities are now saying they believe that the murder may have been because of a grudge that started in the virtual world and seeped into the real world.

According to a report from The Times of London, detectives are investigating whether this was some sort of revenge killing for events that happened while playing the game online. Among the strange events among investigation is a post by a german citizen on the Facebook page of Pyke's girlfriend, in which the poster, David Heiss, vaguely implied he was responsible for Pyke's death. A man matching the description of the Heiss was reportedly arrested by Nottinghamshire Police.

Obviously there are a lot of details about this that are still to come out, and we will try to bring you a follow-up. Many media outlets will immediately point to video gamers being somehow disconnected from reality. But, in my opinion, this is the sort of unfortunate incident that has the potential to happen in any competition that people start caring about out of proportion to its actual importance. Is this really so different from that Colombian soccer player who was tragically murdered after allowing an own goal to the USA during the '94 World Cup? Or from Tonya Harding's boyfriend hiring someone to attack Nancy Kerrigan? As video games and online interaction become important to more people, we'll see more of this sort of tragedy, not less.

In any case, my thoughts go out to Pyke's loved ones who are going through this difficult time.