Nobel Prize

Some are calling it a surprise, but others are saying it's long overdue. Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa, novelist, journalist, essayist, politician, and teacher, was announced Thursday as the 2010 Nobel Prize winner in literature. His wide-ranging work includes monumental, experimental fiction and popular books, "dictator novels" ( The Feast of the Goat ), satire, and humor ( Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter ). Vargas Llosa, 74, is a distinguished visiting professor at Princeton University this year.

ON THE same Friday that our first black president received the Nobel Peace Prize, I made my way through the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, Ala., in the company of my dear friend, Rev. Dr. Thomas Lane Butts. A slight man of 80, with a shock of white hair on white skin, he is a piece of living Alabama history. Based in Monroeville, home of author Harper Lee, to whom he is friend and confidant, he's been aptly described as "a holy man who lives South of God. " "The Rev" (so nicknamed by Kirk West of Allman Brothers fame)

Dr. Carol Greider may be the only Nobel laureate to have been folding laundry when she got the call. After she hung up, she woke up her two children and told them she had won the Nobel Prize in the category physiology or medicine. As she told the New York Times: "In the newspapers, there's a picture of me and my kids right there. How many men have won the Nobel in the last few years, and they have kids the same age as mine, and their kids aren't in the picture? That's a big difference, right?

RE SOLOMON JONES' column on Barack Obama's peace prize: For Alfred Nobel, this prize was dedicated to the person who's done the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the holding and promotion of peace congresses. Is there a better definition of Obama's work since he was elected? It's a myth that the prize is awarded to recognize efforts for peace and human rights only after they have proven successful. It is often awarded to help good behavior.

Some people would have you believe Americans should be embarrassed that President Obama was chosen Friday to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Far from it, they should be proud. For the award says as much about the stature of this nation as it does about its elected leader. The award says who is chosen as America's president matters a great deal to the rest of the world. That Obama was chosen for this honor only nine months into his tenure is more evidence of the impact that his election alone has already had globally.

A University of Pennsylvania graduate, a fellow researcher at New Jersey's Bell Laboratories and a Shanghai-born scientist will share the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics for work on the optical side of the digital revolution. George E. Smith, who got his B.A. from Penn in 1955 and lives in Waretown, Ocean County, and Nova Scotia-born Willard S. Boyle invented the charge-coupled device, an image-capturing technology that led to digital cameras in 1969. They'll share half of the $1.4 million prize with Charles K. Kao, who in 1966 determined how to transmit light over long distances through optical glass fibers, which can carry information - text, music and pictures - more compactly and with less signal loss than metal wires.

A smart aleck-y kidnapping caper that whooshes around to a thumping electronic beat, Nobel Son offers quotes from Ogden Nash and Pat Benatar, deploys a highfalutin synonym for cannibalism (anthropophagy), offers a movie-long commercial for the Mini Cooper, and features a hot candlelit sex scene on an apartment roof. It's not boring, even if it's too gimmicky for its own good. Directed by Bottle Shock's Randall Miller, Nobel Son stars Alan Rickman, camping it up as the monstrous Eli Michaelson, an ill-mannered, arrogant college professor who has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

The economy was the number-one issue in the presidential race won by Democrat Barack Obama. So, what happens now? Can a president do anything? Let's find out. Prez can't fix it. Gerald Ford famously exhorted Americans to "Whip Inflation Now," partly by wearing "WIN" buttons. This preelection Newsweek article contests the notion that a president - any president - can "fix" the economy. It does, however, say that some presidential decisions over the years have managed to hurt the economy, at least temporarily.

The climb was steep, up a narrow concrete street on the western edge of this Yangtze River city, but what waited atop Dengyun Hill was worth the walk: a sparkling new museum devoted to the life and work of American author Pearl Buck. "You know what's amazing? That China is doing all this. That she's really a hero in China," said Kenneth Plessner, who helped lead a 70-person delegation here from Pearl S. Buck International, known as PSBI, the Bucks County foundation that promotes the author's efforts in international adoption and children's aid. Dozens of PSBI staff, board members, supporters and friends gathered with Chinese officials and scholars yesterday to formally open the museum and an adjacent pavilion, their activities watched by bemused local residents who found the sudden influx of foreigners as fascinating as the dedication itself.

Remember the Cold War era, when people obsessed over the medal count during the Olympics? We loved watching plucky American amateurs clobbering the mechanical, godless Reds, every one of them - even their little teenage gymnasts - looming like Ivan Drago. Alas, the Olympics have lost some of their luster after the fall of communism. Gone is the thrill of nationalist rah-rah. It's our Nike-endorsing, semiprofessional athletes against everyone else's Nike-endorsing, semiprofessional athletes, and basically, we're all friends now. Boring.