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Stunning. Befuddling. Disturbing. Words that used to be used to describe Nancy Pelosi’s plastic surgery record can now be applied to the Nobel committee once again. After choosing pseudo-religious environmentalist Al Gore in 2007 for his film, An Inconvenient Truth, the Nobel group has apparently decided to award the president its highest award for… hope? In a statement issued by the committee, Obama was being honored for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Also cited by the Oslo, Norway group was Obama’s push to make the United Nations a preeminent force in international relations. “Only...

The White House has dispatched the lovable Sesame Street resident Elmo to spread the word on ways to ward off the H1N1 flu, but for those who find the red, fluffy Muppet a little too soft, there's Dr. John D. Clarke -- the MD who can rap. In a minute-long video, the Long Island doctor spits rhymes about washing one's hands and using hand sanitizer Clarke is one of 10 finalists competing for a $2,500 prize from the Department of Health and Human Services for the best H1N1 prevention video. After picking the finalists from more than 200 entries, the...

An American professor has become the first Jew to win the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine, popularly known as the "Arab Nobel Prize." Stanford professor Ronald Levy, who heads the university's Oncology department, told Haaretz that as an American Jew married to an Israeli it never crossed his mind that he might win the Saudi-financed competition. "I didn't think there was much chance, and I forgot about it," Levy said. "It's an Arab country, and I didn?t think they are likely to pick a Jew." After he was informed of his victory, Levy rushed to check the contest Web...

OSLO (Reuters) – A $6 cardboard box that uses solar power to cook food, sterilize water and could help 3 billion poor people cut greenhouse gases, has won a $75,000 prize for ideas to fight global warming. The "Kyoto Box," named after the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol that seeks to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, is aimed at billions of people who use firewood to cook. Costing 5 euros ($6.60) to make, it can also make it easier to boil polluted water. "We're saving lives and saving trees," the Kyoto Box's developer Jon Boehmer, a Norwegian based in Kenya, said...

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/24/priceless-video-bailout-prize-patrol-confronts-aig-geithner-sen-snowe/ "Taxpayers Clearing House Prize Patrol" throws cash at Tim Geithner after a hearing, presents oversized checks executives at AIG, CITI, Goldman and confronts Sentator Olympia Snowe with a large check to sign in her office. They also confront Sen. Schumer!

FRESNO, California (Reuters) - Republican John McCain said on Monday if elected president he would challenge American experts to develop a futuristic battery to power cars and win a $300 million prize. McCain, a week after taking heat from Democrats for reversing his stance on offshore oil drilling after long opposing it, sought to portray himself as a forward-looking leader on solving America's energy crisis. With Americans reeling from record-high $4-a-gallon gasoline during the prime summer driving season, both McCain and his Democratic opponent in the November election, Barack Obama, are pressing their proposals for tackling energy problems that are...

A Muslim asylum seeker lost out on an award for volunteer work after indicating that he would not shake hands with the woman who was to present him with the prize. Alinoor Ahmed Sheikh, a Somali based in an asylum hostel in Tralee, was to have been honoured for his work raising funds for Amnesty International at a ceremony last Thursday organised by the Africa Centre in Dublin. The event was designed to highlight the positive work done by refugees and asylum seekers in Irish communities. Five minutes before Benedicta Attoh, a member of the National Consultative Committee on Racism...

New startups hoping to make their mark on the space industry still face high entry barriers just to cover their initial costs, investors said Wednesday. (snip) "I am passionately committed to prizes," Gingrich said. "The great power of prizes is simple; they allow anybody anywhere who's competent to try and solve a problem."

OSLO (SATIRENEWSERVICE) -- Responding to overwhelming pressure from every civilized person on earth with any semblance of intelligence, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee today announced that it had voted to terminate its charter. Just prior to the unanimous vote, the Committee voted to rescind numerous past prizes - including the 2007 prize to itinerant comedian and performance artist Albert Gore of the United States - and award those prizes and all future prizes to the United States military. "This about face by the Nobel Peace Committee," stated former Committee Chairman and former leader of the Norwegian Labor Party, Trygve Andreesen,...

'Mr White Man's Time' wins punctuality prize By Mike Pflanz, West Africa Correspondent Last Updated: 2:30am BST 09/10/2007 Narcisse Aka won a £30,000 villa A competition to reward punctuality in a region notorious for lateness has been won by a legal adviser known as "Mr White Man's Time". Narcisse Aka, 40, was picked as the most consistently punctual person in Ivory Coast, a country with the chronic "sociological problem" of missed appointments and delays. Appointment times are regarded as purely advisory in many of the humid coastal regions of West Africa. This is damaging productivity, said the organisers of the...

The Lunar Robotics Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will be staying put, at least for another six years at $20 million a year. The office was originally slated for closure by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin as part of a cost-cutting move. Unfortunately, Griffin did not reckon on the wrath of Sen. Richard Shelby, Alabama's senior senator. Shelby balked at the closure and, working with other senators and representatives of both parties, successfully prevented it. The office is currently managing the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which is scheduled to...

LONDON (AFP) - Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan was named as the chairman of the six-person committee that will judge the world's biggest prize on Sunday, awarded to departing African statesmen for promoting good governance. Annan will be joined on the committee for the annual Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership by the UN Special Envoy for Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari, former UN high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson, and the Special Adviser to the Director-General of UNESCO, Aicha Bah Diallo. Also on the committee are Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former finance and foreign minister of Nigeria, and...

The U.S. and other modern capitalist economies rely on a handful of approaches to stimulate innovation. Big corporate research-and-development shops invest shareholders' money in the search for future profit. Small entrepreneurial start-ups do the same with venture capital. Academics toil in big universities, sometimes for profit, sometimes for glory. Open-source software wizards mend and tend shared software that no one owns, the high-tech equivalent of a barn-raising. Government steps in where private money fears to tread. Now, a proliferation of prizes is attracting bright minds to stubborn problems. InnoCentive, a company spun off six years ago by drug maker Eli...

The Space Exploration Alliance, the Space Frontier Foundation, and the X Prize Foundation have come together to call on Congress to support and expand Centennial Challenges, NASA's space prize program. Created with an appropriation of just under $10 million in FY2005, Centennial Challenges is currently returning highly leveraged and efficient research, development, and engineering benefits to NASA at extremely low costs – and stands ready to accomplish even loftier goals if given additional funding. Unfortunately, although the House of Representatives voted to support the program in 2007, such funding was zeroed out in the 2007 Senate appropriations bill for NASA....

The 2006 Nobel prize for economics has been awarded to Professor Edmund Phelps of Columbia University for his work in the late 1960s overturning the conventional wisdom on the trade-off between inflation and unemployment. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it had awarded the economics prize in memory of Alfred Nobel to Prof Phelps “for his analysis of the intertemporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy”. It is the second time the academy has awarded the prize to a fierce critic of post-war Keynesian macroeconomic policy. Milton Friedman, the grandfather of monetarism, won the prize in 1976. After the second world...

Maths genius declines top prize Photos of the reclusive genius are rare Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics, has declined one of the discipline's top awards. Dr Perelman was to have been presented with the prestigious Fields Medal by King Juan Carlos of Spain, at a ceremony in Madrid on Tuesday. In 2002, the mathematician claimed to have solved a century-old problem called the Poincare Conjecture. So far, experts working to verify his proof have found no significant flaws. There had been considerable speculation that Grigory "Grisha" Perelman would...

Grigory Perelman a no-show for his Fields Medal.Four mathematicians were today due to collect gold medals and glory in Madrid, Spain, having been declared winners of the 2006 Fields Medals — referred to as the 'Nobel prizes' of mathematics. But only three turned up. Grigory Perelman, a reclusive Russian mathematician who was widely expected to be one of this year's winners (see 'Maths 'Nobel' rumoured for Russian recluse'), was indeed honoured at the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians. But after a round of applause, president of the International Mathematical Union John Ball said "I regret that Dr...

World's top maths genius jobless and living with mother By Nadejda Lobastova in St Petersburg and Michael Hirst (Filed: 20/08/2006) A maths genius who won fame last week for apparently spurning a million-dollar prize is living with his mother in a humble flat in St Petersburg, co-existing on her ’30-a-month pension, because he has been unemployed since December.   Grigory 'Grisha' Perelman The Sunday Telegraph tracked down the eccentric recluse who stunned the maths world when he solved a century-old puzzle known as the Poincare Conjecture. Grigory "Grisha" Perelman's predicament stems from an acrimonious split with a leading Russian mathematical...

Here Are Pulitzer Prize Winners, Announced Monday By Joe Strupp Published: April 17, 2006 3:05 PM ET NEW YORK The New York Times and The Washington Post were the top winners as this year’s Pulitzer Prizes for journalism were announced at Columbia University shortly after 3 p.m. ET on Monday afternoon. In an unusual event, there were two winners in two categories, including the coveted Public Service slot -- shared by the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. The Post won four prizes and the Times won three. The Times-Picayune had not been named one...

(snip) Until recently, the chances that a college senior like Mr. Jones would contribute to the NASA space program were remote. Contracts belonged mostly to the Boeings of the world. Tinkerers and students were kept at the far edge of the periphery. But with budgets tightening and the obstacles to human space exploration looking more daunting, NASA is enlisting the expertise of outsiders. For example, the agency is offering 13 contests, which it calls Centennial Challenges, that anyone can enter. The prizes range from $200,000 to more than $5 million, for building gear as diverse as solar sails, lunar excavators...