In my brief entry about the candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize who were passed over for President Obama, I made a mistake. I said that the Nobel Prize for Physics had been awarded to "the man who invented fibre optics". I now looked it up, and it is not quite right. Professor Charles Kuen Kao (pinyin Gao Kun) only got half the prize (the other ( Read more... )

...the award to Obama stops being a joke and becomes a scandal. Apparently, the defeated candidates included the following ( Read more... )

If I were Obama, I'd have turned it down. Woodrow Wilson won it in 1919; 'nuff said.

Someone in Germany has apparently demanded, after Guenther Grass' revelation of his wartime SS membership, that he should return the Nobel Prize. A contemptible demand. First: the prize was bestowed for literature, not for political engagement, and I do not think anyone at present is seriously willing to challenge the rank of Guenther Grass as ( Read more... )