Lagaan in chinese

Nobel and Ignobel

Nobel and Ignobel were brothers, step brothers infact. Nobel was the nerd. He invented dynamite, gelatin-the explosive that is not made from cows and wrote a play called Nemesis. The play about an Italian noble (not nobel) woman was so horrendous that his wife eloped with his step brother and his well wishers burnt the rest of the copies of the play. Depressed,broken, but not bankrupt...Nobel was on his death bed. A french newspaper greatly exaggerated reports of Nobel's death and wrote about how he had invented weapons that killer faster then ever before. (this was wierd, since the death of even the most blood thirsty, but victorious despots only leads us to express our sorrow..but not our happyness). Our man Nobel, read his obituary, was upset and to link his name with something better...created the Nobel prizes. Oh! Nobel laureates, wake up. You are winning bloodied money. (not to say that I wont take it, if they give it to me).
(Note: Indian readers will also know the name Bofors. Nobel, at one point of time owned bofors).

Now to the step brother.Ignobel was a ladies man who made a living running a circus in Russia. He was infact, the creator of the Russian circus.He never liked his brother.

In true filmy style, they fought each other. It was a long and deadly vendetta.It was also not much helped by the fact that Nobel's wife eloped with Ignobel. Anyway, after Nobel's death, Ignobel, still hale and healthy, decided that his name too should live on.Thus were created the Ignobels, in memory of the fun he had.
This year's Nobel and Ignobel prizes have been announced.

Its always fun to start off with the Ignobels, awarded by a very interesting journal called Annals of improbable research (http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/index.htm). This year's chemistry prizes went to Tequila diamonds and a brassiere that can be converted into a gas mask. I think that tequila diamonds are an excellent idea. I have had the horror of multiple encounters with that vile substance and guess that another grad student like me came up with the idea of putting it to better use. However, I wonder what happens to the catterpillar at the bottom of each bottle. I am told that there was no tradition to pickle a caterpillar in the bottle.But at some point of time, an enterprising salesman realised that the americans would drink more of it , if it came with something wierd.

Now to the bra, its clearly for women who work in really hazardous environs. Why else would you need two of them?Further, whats gonna happen to the men? This is just sexist. Its just more evidence of the feminist plot to take over the world.

(note: to people who like annals of improbable research,I also suggest http://www.jir.com/ )

Moving onto the Nobels, the biology/physiology/medicine prize went to a trio- Elizabeth Blackburn and her student Carol Grieder and an independently working person Jack Tsoztak(or something like that). They solved a pretty important puzzle and much deserved it. As usual, the Lasker awards, given to them in 2006, predicted their nobel well in advance. I will direct you to wikipedia for all the facts about telomere and telomerase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase). I will add what wiki doesnt say. Telomerase was once the magic bullet to make us live forever. However,only diamonds from tequila are forever, we may at most die another day- with or without telomerase. Despite this horrible fact, many biology students have had a love affair with telomerase- brief for some, longer for others.

There is also one other lore about telomerase.Carol Greider is often portrayed as the greatest phd student that ever was- since she discovered telomerase on Christmas eve-hard at work while everyone else sang christmas carols. Cornell was also all abuzz becase Dr.Jack was once a grad student at Cornell...in the aeons long forgotten. This nobel prize also marks another important trend: the rising number of women in biology.

Now the physics nobel went to people who got us fiber/fibre (do you speak british english or american)optic cables and CCD. CCD brings to us digital cameras in their most ubiquitous use and the Hubble space telescope in its most exotic use. While it is debatable whether it deserves a nobel, its in keeping with previous nobels going to technological developments like PCR, rather than a fundamental scientific advance. Now, the Fibre optic cable nobel is bound to cause some heart burn. While, Dr. Kao undoubtedly made several critical technical contributions, several others including an Indian called Narinder Singh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narinder_Singh_Kapany) made pioneering contributions, which have possibly gone unrecognized. However, I am not competent to understand Dr. Kao's contributions and will leave it as such.

The chemistry and peace prizes are yet to come. I wonder who the peace prize is gonna go to. I am betting that it would be a somewhat not so well known figure, so in short..i dont have a clue.

I stopped studying chemistry 5 years ago.I will stop at that. Nobel prizes in Literature are usually for books that are of the Sylvia Plath school of literature- i.e books you wouldnt read or write if you were in the right frame of mind. Some of the authors are so obscure that some judges openly boycotted the final choice. However, in truth , there are many a nobel prize winning book that make a good read. My candidate for a nobel in literature would be Bill Waterson, for Calvin and Hobbs...which must be one of the greatest pieces of American literature ever.

However,here is a true prediction for a future nobel prize: Yamanaka and others who have discovered the technique of making embryonic stem cell like cells from adult tissues.

with that..........I end this rambling discourse.

Note: Some creative license used.