Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace prize

[cowiz]

Tennille: Tell me, young man, what do you want out of life?
(While Tennille was speaking, Homer is trying to reach a bowl of peas from the center of the table.)
Homer: I want peas!
Tennille: We all want peace! But it's always just out of reach.
Homer: (moans) Uh huh?
Tennille: So, what's the best way to get peace?
Homer: With the knife! (Gets his peas)
Tennille: Exactly! Not with the olive branch, but the bayonet! Ha, ha, Simpson, you're like the son I never had.
Homer: And you're like the father I never visit

[Kristie]

Personally I think everyone who voted for him should have gotten one for stopping the republican juggernaut.

By awarding it to him I think that is what happened..

Yeah, and I'm sure it pissed my Dad off!

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I would piss myself if he went and invaded N. Korea tomorrow!

[klr]

I would piss myself if he went and invaded N. Korea tomorrow!

Not half as much as Kim Jong-Il would.

[Twoflower]

Personally I think everyone who voted for him should have gotten one for stopping the republican juggernaut.

By awarding it to him I think that is what happened..

I want a nobel peace prize.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

Well, the US President can win the Nobel Peace Prize!
Not to be out done, I hope our PM will win the next Darwin Award.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It's worth any amount of money. It pissed my brother off.

[owtth]

I would piss myself if he went and invaded N. Korea tomorrow!

Not half as much as Kim Jong-Il would.

[Drewish]

This has inspired me to write a blog post.

http://omgobama.wordpress.com/2009/10/0 ... president/

[AshtonBlack]

I'm afraid, as much as I admire the man, and I really do, scrapping some nukes is a "good" thing, but peace prize? Please.....

[Elessarina]

[Psi Wavefunction]

Our lord the savior hath come to deliver us from ourselves, etc.... seriously, do people NEVER LEARN?

From that perspective, the very notion of this kind of award is bollocks.

I think the science Nobels are also bollocks, and 'peace' is even more bloody objective and political... the thing is, everything is so interrelated that no one person can do anything single handedly - neither science nor peace efforts, nor much of anything else, for that matter. While it does take one insane fucker to actually get shit organised (and that is usually recognised without any artificial awarding), it also takes a group of insane fuckers to follow and actually get stuff done.

And then you get stories like one of the original discoverers of last year's Nobel-winning finding, Green Fluorescent Protein, quit his PhD and his project was passed on to someone else. Rumour has it, the guy who actually isolated GFP is now a bus driver somewhere (thereby better off financially >_> ), while the guys who picked up his project afterwards got the nobel. You can argue that is fair, but you can also argue it isn't. What about all the other work that contributed to eventually isolating the protein? What about the guys who originally found that protein, but didn't actually engineer it? What about the people who made up the arsenal of genetic and molecular and biochemical techniques that the discoverers then used to make GFP? Why don't they get credit? Without them, this finding would've never happened! The whole concept of awarding a single person(s) for a single finding in science is absurd! Yes, there are good scientists, who could be awarded for their good scientific sense and methodology, but the findings themselves aren't suitable for reward, in my opinion! Especially when so much of research is pure luck...

And science is much easier to look at objectively than piles of crazy humans with all our dreams, goals and hatreds and flares of irrationality. Political activists have an unfair advantage that they only focus on one aspect of a social problem, ignoring the massive mesh of other shit surrounding it. Political leaders have to lead a group as a whole, considering all the side effects of each action (and so many thing that solve one problem tend to fuck up everything else!) - thus they pretty much always get vilified. It's pretty much impossible to lead a country well enough to please everyone, or even please almost everyone. It's too complex. And the internal political strife doesn't help either. So you lose as soon as you step into government, no matter what you do. (unless you happen to be of a racial minority and flocks of people worship you as the next Messiah... )

Political activists, on the other hand, only need focus on a single problem, ignoring all the not-necessarily-wonderful consequences of their 'solutions'. They tend to see things as black-and-white, the opressor and the opressed, the evil bullying majority and the impoverished disadvantaged minority. That is partially true in some cases, but is most often muuuuch blurrier than that. Like the Free Tibet!!1! morons, much of whom can barely find China (let alone Tibet) on a fucking map. Also, much of whom have no fucking idea what life in Tibet was like prior to Chinese rule. (if they seriously thing monastic feudalism is a wonderful idea, then there's seriously little hope for them to regain sanity). I'm not saying the situation there is good or anything, just that is many orders of magnitude more complex than "China invaded Tibet and now they suffer. Kick out China, and everyone will live Happily Ever After(TM). PS: Communism is EBIL(TM)"

And yet those activists get a disproportionate amount of respect, and in some cases, awards (don't think the Tibet case specifically but there are others). We encourage one sided views of issues, because those are actually a bit easier to digest than "OH SHIT, THEY HAVE A POINT TOO! ". Sociopolitical crap is complicated enough in our workplaces, for fuck's sake! Now extend that over millions of people with centuries of history and a plethora of various beliefs and traditions, and there's almost no way to come up with a half-decent solution that would even please the majority, let alone everyone. And the whole concept of pleasing the majority at the expense of minority is also rather questionable. And add to that the fact that people don't always truly know what they want, and are easy to manipulate, and you can see why some of us avoid large-scale politics altogether!

Anyway, here was my little rant. I'm just worried about situations where people flock around holy leaders and all that. Especially in America - they are trained to WORSHIP their fucking government over there. Submission to authority is ingrained in you since elementary school, which is probably why I had so many problems there. My ego was too big for the US school system Apparently, part of their worry may have been that I came from a recent enemy (Russia), and still spoke our language at home, and didn't assimilate really well. Perhaps part of the extreme vigilance from the staff I was subject to wasn't so much my apparent unruly behaviour, as the fact that I was a bit of a political enemy. Looking back at those times later with my parents, we're coming more and more to a conclusion that US is a true totalitarian state, where underneath all the propaganda about freedom and individuality, complete obedience to the state is obligatory. Scary, ain't that? And most countries tend to be a little like that, but US is much richer and WELL-ORGANISED, so they're actually more successful in that direction.

Now that we've established that I'm a cynical bastard (and I haven't even started about ACADEMIC politics yet :twisted: )... let's have cheese!

</rant>

[Psi Wavefunction]

Oh, and I forgot a thought: I think perhaps even more significant contributors to peace are those who in a fit of rage, instead of fighting/abusing/killing their opponent, step aside and subsequently resolve the issue through compromise and rational discourse instead. By that I mean you regular garden variety civilians, in all sorts of regular garden variety situations. People who don't participate in bar fights, people who fix relationships at their workplace, people who refuse to carry centuries old rites of revenge... only through all those efforts can some level of sanity be achieved. Leaders can't do much there...

[Drewish]

One of the best cynical rants I've seen in a while. Not saying I agree, but I enjoy your insightful anger :twisted:

[maiforpeace]

I think issue needs to be taken with the Nobel Award process, not with Obama. I'm glad he had the humility to accept the prize as a call to arms rather than take credit for what hasn't really happened yet. His formal, written response:

This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

That is why I've said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won't all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award -- and the call to action that comes with it -- does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.

So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we've begun together. I'm grateful that you've stood with me thus far, and I'm honored to continue our vital work in the years to come.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

How Obama handles matters with Afghanistan will tell whether or not he really deserves the peace prize.