Nobel Prize 2007 (The Vaguely Interested Edition)
If you’re vaguely interested in the Nobel Prize, here’s the results:
Medicine: My interpretation of the science awards may be off. But it seems as though three guys figured out a way to insert strands of DNA into the chromosomes of stem cells, and then fertilize mouse eggs to raise lab mice with ‘discrete genetic modifications’. These mice are known as ‘Knock Out Mice’. Sounds like Gattaca to me.
Physics: Two guys discovered ‘a new way of using magnetism to control the flow of electrical current through sandwiches of metals built at the nanotechnology scale.’ In other words, they described the physical process by which you’re able to have a hard-drive that isn’t the size of your house.
Chemistry: Apparently one of the better places to have yourself a chemical reaction is on a solid surface. Hence ‘Surface Chemistry’. There’s a process which describes the way the molecules are interacting with the surface, but nobody really knew how it actually worked. Gerhardt Ertl seems to have figured it out
Literature: Doris Lessing, “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”. I knew of her before the Nobel, which is good. But it is a safe choice. Boring. Thomas Pynchon has still not won. What’s the number for the Nobel helpdesk? Mine is faulty.
Peace: The IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) and it’s chairman, Al Gore, “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”. Fucking awesome. This, like the 2002 award to Jimmy Carter, will be taken as a Fuck You to the Bush administration. Not that it’s about that, no no no. But awesome anyway. So yeah, America. Can we please elect Gore for President now? I mean… it can’t be any worse…