"We have a total of 150 nominees so far, of which 21 are organisations," Geir Lundestad, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told Reuters on Tuesday after compiling a list of names sent by a February 1 deadline.

So far as I've noticed, Bono's just another whiny musician who (like his contemporary, Sting), thinks a good answer to having talent (regarding which, not being stingy, I'll reserve judgment, instead of saying definitively that I think U2 is nearly as overrated as spray cheese in a can) is to overwhelm it with commonplace political truisms. Any piece of art where the political message is stronger than the aesthetics is not really art. (It usually also indicates a weak political message, meaning the whole vector is not efficient.) Princess Diana did a lot of actual stuff on land mines, but nobody ever suggested _she_ should have a Nobel. Perhaps if she'd showed them her tits.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 06:01 PM | TrackBack 0

In another study, Prof Loftus recruited American men and women to talk about childhood visits to Disneyland, with a newspaper advertisement showing a fake scene with Bugs Bunny in the Californian theme park. When interviewed, 33 per cent of the volunteers described meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland as children - an impossible event since Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros character and has never appeared at Disneyland.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 01:08 PM | TrackBack 0

Does that mean the American approach is ungreen? Not necessarily. Even if fossil fuels were used to produce hydrogen without sequestration, fuel-cell-powered cars would still produce zero local emissions on roads. (Wags call this %uFFD2drive here, pollute elsewhere%uFFD3.) Further, hydrogen is likely to be produced by some green sources anyway: in the Pacific north-west, hydro-electric power is dirt cheap at night, and on the windswept Great Plains renewables or biomass may prove more economic than fossil fuels.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 12:40 PM | TrackBack 0

Existentialism is about re-defining yourself in an increasingly absurd world as defined for you by the traditions of science, philosophy and religion; -- you cannot help but feel alien to it.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 12:28 PM | TrackBack 0

It would be easy to write a book that focused on the eccentricities of this industry and for the author to use its pages to mock the secretiveness of the perfumers and to rage self-righteously about the mark-up on a bottle of perfume. (Only about five percent of the price actually covers the "juice.") But instead of following the most obvious path, Chandler Burr listened to his inner geek. With the contagious enthusiasm of a nerd given the run of a chemistry lab, he has transformed a chance meeting with a curious biophysicist named Luca Turin into an amusing and poetic adventure in science and art.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 11:28 AM | TrackBack 0

However, evidence presented by the Complainant indicated that the web site had, in fact, "contained several references to alcoholism, alcoholics anonymous and contained a representation of an apparently intoxicated man walking across the screen". In addition, two days after registering the domain Walker approached Diageo - Guinness's' parent company - to enquire whether they would be interested in advertising on any web site associated with it. The Complaint also noted that Walker had only ever used the name Johnnie when contacting Diageo - while other evidence, such as automated email replies from the Respondent, showed that he exclusively used the name John and not Johnnie.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 11:25 AM | TrackBack 0