I, like so many many other, have nothing but the highest hopes for Barack Obama.There was (and still is) great joy in my heart that this man (and not GWB or any other one of the minions of Cheney & Co.) is currently sitting in the White House.And I'm patient..I am willing to give the man more than 10 months to bring about the phenomenal changes he promised.But...I just scratch my head over this Nobel Peace Prize thing. Now, the Nobel Committee has been known to make some er...unusual choices for this honour in the past, Henry Kissinger certainly LEAPS to mind, but I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a carrot for Obama or some other strange prescient pick on the part of the august members of the Nobel panel.
Christopher Cooper is also struggling with the oddity of this choice....
They Oughta Give Me The Wurlitzer Prize
by Christopher Cooper
Members of the Committee, Distinguished guests, Fellow honorees, Friends, and Family Members not too embarrassed to attend:
I humbly and gratefully accept the Nobel Prize in Physics, the recognition, the honor, the plaque, the trophy, the discount coupons, the windbreaker, the keychain, the bumper sticker, the Alfred Nobel bobblehead and the generous cash award which, if I may, I would like to receive in twenties and fifties.
I am as surprised at this as many of you must be, not least those who know me and are all too aware of how far short of my grandiose pronouncements my actual accomplishments have fallen. But do any of us today know that I may not yet, someday, wake up, wise up, get up and get going? That I might not, while sleeping some night, grow a great and sturdy backbone that, upon my waking will support my new found commitment to honoring the dreams and hopes and plans and promises of which I have so often and so eloquently spoken? We do not. For all we know I may even pay off my credit card debt and quit the gin bottle. I believe this high honor may be just the lever that will lift me up and set me again upon the course I have so long advocated for myself and for us all.
But I will tell you that I feel today already on the cusp of great accomplishment. While it is true that as long ago as nineteen sixty-seven opinion held that I would not do great work in the field of physics, there is not an inescapable descent from a grade of sixty-five on the New York State Regents Physics Examination to a life devoid of discovery and productivity in that discipline.
1 comment:
i agree that this whole NPP thing is... strange.
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