Hey, it's that poet you like. Also, Alison Bechdel and Yitang Zhang. Seems like a good group.
If I were Zhang I would either be feeling soooooo incredibly good, or perhaps even smug, right now, or soul-crushingly worried about my follow-up act.
Getting a genius award seems like it would involve a lot of work.
Personally I'm still at a point in my life where all the genius award winners are older than me, so I don't yet feel bad about myself when they're announced. It seems I only have a few years of that left, though.
Probably envy over not having been awarded a genius grant yet.
"[Zhang] served as a lecturer at UNH from 1999 until around January 2014, when UNH appointed him to a full professorship."
You just need to solve a longstanding high-profile problem at some point.
Is "why can't I sleep?" such a problem? I think I have a lead.
Possibly. When you come up with a solution post it to the arXiv and we'll see what happens.
It's pretty unusual in math these days for anyone to have a follow-up act. The outstanding problems are getting too hard.
Good points being made here, love the commentary.
Do insomniac spambots count up electric sheep?
It's better to burn out, because spam never sleeps.
Age 71 sounds like a perfect time to get it and enjoy it without needing too much of a follow-up, so props to Pamela O. Long. I think all of us should aim for that.
5: Looks like they're mostly in their 40s or older. But this year there's one who's my age! Scary.
4: Yeah, 90% perspiration is what I've heard.
I just realized I know one of them from back when he was active in the hacker scene. Hah!
I think an old neighbor of the Flip-Pater's was a '90s-vintage M-genius. Lovely house.
I just realized I know one of them from back when he was active in the hacker scene.
This is where it starts feeling weird. Taking a class with a MacArthur fellow professor: cool, but still within the realm of normal. Going to a Christmas party where another guest is a MacArthur fellow, close to my age (as happened to me a few years ago): whaa?
One of the professors in my department got one a couple of years ago, which wouldn't be weird except that he's younger than I am.
Huh. I hadn't realized that the one person in my department who actually got tenure in recent memory won one of these.
I just heard about another person getting denied tenure. I guess that's the threshold. "What, you don't have a MacArthur grant yet? You're fired!"
For excellence in Dinosploitation, a genius grant for essear! I do think you're probably unfogged's best hope right now.
Hm, I can think of three or four at least semi-regular commenters that I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see on the list. Maybe a couple more than that?
I think I've mentioned that an old friend (who emailed me two days ago about her new book--why stop?) won one, but she's been so wildly successful (deservedly!) that the MacArthur has turned out to be just one more thing. I'm glad no one I know and hate has won one.
30 is probably right, really, and I only meant to build him up because of the dinosaur joking. I do like that they cover such a wide range of endeavors, which makes it seem like they mean more than more pointed awards.
"What, you don't have a MacArthur grant yet? You're fired!"
If they really wanted to encourage people, they would have denied the winner, too.
three or four at least semi-regular commenters that I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see on the list
Really?
I wonder what percentage of Fields and Clark medal winners win MacArthurs.
33.last: well, sure, insofar as "successful early-to-mid-career academic at elite school" is sort of the modal descriptor for a winner.
"Jacob Lurie for Derived Algebraic Geometry (DAG)." Foo on initialism overloading! DAG is "Directed Acyclic Graph," goldurnit.
No, I'm not going to look up which one came first.
24. Knowing a (previous) winner when he was an unsufferable undergraduate is weird too.
three or four at least semi-regular commenters that I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see on the list
Really?
Well we do know one person who figured out who have have to blow to get the Bancroft Prize in American history.
well, sure, insofar as "successful early-to-mid-career academic at elite school" is sort of the modal descriptor for a winner.
I think it's bimodal, along with "artist/musician/writer being rewarded for proficiency and consistency in the face of obscurity".
How funny would it be if he got a MacArthur, too? He'd never live that down.
I thought the new thing for rewriting swathes of mathematics was homotopy type theory; now it's derived algebraic geometry? When will these crazy mathematicians stop?
Anyway, somebody from here won, which is nice.
41 to 38.
39: "minority-oriented nonprofit founder" also makes a strong showing.
One of the winners looks and talks a lot like a semi-regular commenter, but is not that commenter.
44: So it'll either be Essear, or you, or Witt. Or the poster who appears to have had a book published by University of Pittsburgh Press, but it's someone with the same name.
It will definitely not be me, no.
Let's rank commenters by likelihood of winning a Macarthur.
46: Much more semi- than regular, but Cosma should also be on that list.
48 was meant to be facetious, dalriata.
I've been funded by that foundation before. It's not the same thing, I guess. Anyway, it was my boss's grant.
50: Massive reserves of earnestness is probably a good trait if you want to win.
51: that might mean you're off-limits for the big prize, sorry to say.
That was always my boss's reason for why he didn't ever win.
We have an Orwell Prize winner in our midst, too.
My dad won a prize for Least Coordinated Skier. They gave him a trophy and everything.
Is the Orwell Prize one of those things Andrew Sullivan came up with so he can criticize people in a pseudo-ironic way, but he never explains what it means?
Tying two OPs together, I've been made aware of a MacArthur fellow who's working on what sounds a lot like ">http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_family_independence_initiative"> culture-of-poverty stuff. Not sure what I think of it - I like the mutual aid tack, but it also sets itself up in opposition to the welfare state more generally. They're from genuinely humble origins, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
re: 58
It's a well respected political journalism prize. I don't know what the US equivalent would be.
Like a Grammy, if it were given for journalism and respected.
Do they give MacArthurs for writing slightly less infuriating user interfaces? Because I'm coming to the realization that I'm never going to get that Nobel I've always wanted, and I may have to set my sights a little lower.
Oh, I see Jacob Lurie has been namechecked in HoTT contexts.
I can't even use this as a way to feel bad about myself. I mean what was I doing that was going to get a Genius Grant? Another year they have neglected my Facebook status updates!!!
Yes, I am looking forward to my Genius Grant for mediocre scholarship, pen and ink drawings, and staring into space a lot.
Did we ever come up with an appropriate German word for the joy you feel at a friend's success when it is mingled with envy?
I'm already feeling bad about myself and deeply resentful.
The world does not seem good about second acts for people who've failed these days--unless you're a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. And even that seems more like a performance.
I'd settle for $50 and a nice certificate. Anybody want to give me that?
Spike, congratulations on your Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.
Now we just need ten of us to find $5.
67.3: That's not true - look at Joan Rivers, all those overweight former athletes that get to be on "Biggest Loser", and all those has-beens on other reality tv shows. The key is to have become famous during your first act.
My uncle won a MacArthur once. Regular bragging!
Is Alison Bechdel most known for the Bechdel test? Are there a significant number of people that know what the Bechdel test is, but have no idea who she is?
Wait, that's something my mom says on occasion, and I just looked him up and he's not there. Haha on me.
75: I thought so. I wonder if the Bechdel Test will outlive her and her work. Then she'll be remembered only as an answer to a trivia question.
Maybe your uncle won over MacArthur once? Was he part of the Chinese Volunteers that surprised him when get to near the Yalu?
Possibly he left a cake out in the rain?
And lost the recipe for some reason that, I guess, must be related.
78: Was he pressed in love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants?
Hey, it's that poet you like.
Which one? Google says neither has ever been mentioned here.
For instance, no one has written, "It's like I was saying to my buddy Terrance at dinner a couple weeks ago..." For instance.
Amusingly, he switched from CMU to Pitt because he was recruited by Pitt's basketball coach. That's one hell of a poet.
I was aware of Bechdel as an artist, and then I heard about the Test, and it was years later before I realized it was the same Bechdel (in truth, I knew the strip; I don't know if I particularly knew the name).
A poet I linked to mere days ago. Finger on the pulse, man.
I wonder if the Bechdel Test will outlive her and her work. Then she'll be remembered only as an answer to a trivia question.
And, amusingly, she didn't even come up with the test -- the original cartoon presents it as comments from a friend of hers (I'm not going to look it up to see who she credited).
OK, maybe it wouldn't have killed me to mouse over the links.
88: It's Wallace. "Wallace" is the name you want if you want to be sometimes, but not always, remembered as being behind a particular idea.
I wonder if the Bechdel Test will outlive her and her work.
Her work is a fairly big deal if you are a certain age and a certain orientation. The musical of Fun Home is set for a Broadway transfer which...I realize not many people pay attention to theater, but I think the Bechdel Test is also discussed among a pretty limited set.
Theater is expensive compared to complaining about sexism.
Hayes wrote a blurb for my niece's chapbook, which came out in January. She was thrilled.
92: I'm a fan of her work (and I'm not of a certain age or a certain orientation).
95: peep, of uncertain age and no particular orientation...
Because of Pittsburgh's skewed streets, I don't know my orientation. Probably something close to NNW.
It's the exact equivalent of body mass index in that it's really useful when you use it at a population level to determine the extent of a real and serious problem, but everyone uses it at an individual level to get results that are irritating and pointless. The difference is that BMI was originally meant to be used at a valuable population level and the Bechdel Test was meant to be used in the irritating pointless way.
92: I'm a fan of her work (and I'm not of a certain age or a certain orientation).
As am I, incidentally.
There's something weird about talking about how the Bechdel Test was 'meant to be used'. In the original strip, it's a rule personally used by a fictional character, leading to depressing results (that is, that living by it meant, at the time, basically giving up movies), not something being advocated by Bechdel as a rule everyone should abide by.
In practice, I've only seen it used as commentary on movies generally, rather than as a reason to see or not see an individual movie.
My policy on seeing movies is to not bother because if it is a great movie, it will end up in the machine outside the grocery store for $1.26.
I hadn't heard of Bechdel until hearing of the Bechdel test, but it's pretty clear that she's one of those people who, even if you've never heard of her, you've seen tons of people imitating her. When I read her comic strip for the first time it was like "oh OK that's why every single "webcomic" (also not something I read much) is that way."
For the heck of it, two links about the Bechdel Test:
The Bechdel Test has become a huge part of our conversation about pop culture, but we all feel compelled to dismiss it or minimize it.
Perhaps the greatest complaint about the Bechdel Test, though, is the notion that it ends conversations instead of starting them. You just check the boxes and mark a movie "pass" or "fail." But that one is definitely not true -- the Bechdel Test is often a part, or the beginning, of a larger and more complicated conversation about female representation in movies.
...
The fascinating thing about the Bechdel Test page is that it breaks down, by category, which of the three steps of the test a movie fails. (And actually, the user debates about a lot of the films are fascinating to read, because they do drill down into the relationships in the movie, and how the characters are represented. . . .
For example, yes Pacific Rim fails the Bechdel test. Pacific Rim is not perfect. There should be more women! The Russian and Chinese teams should have gotten a lot more to do. Mako and Sasha talking would have indicated that both roles were stronger/more present in the film. There could have been less focus on white dudes. But the above perspective by @spider-xan on Mako is important and should be listened to and considered by all people dismissing the movie in the name of feminism. (It doesn't mean you have to like the movie! I more than understand someone who wouldn't, because there aren't more women or for any other reason. But your perspective =/= universally feminist). She's a female lead of color who gets her own hero arc, and whose function is not to support or admire a man. Why would we want to send the message that we don't want that? Why do we think that is automatically not feminist or anti-feminist, because it doesn't meet this one arbitrary "test for feminism" (women minimally interacting)?
Let's propose the Mako Mori test, to live alongside the Bechdel test (not to supplant it! My point is not that we shouldn't care about women interacting--I care about this A LOT--but that isn't the pinnacle of feminism or the only thing we should care about). The Mako Mori test is passed if the movie has: a) at least one female character; b) who gets her own narrative arc; c) that is not about supporting a man's story. I think this is about as indicative of "feminism" (that is, minimally indicative, a pretty low bar) as the Bechdel test. It is a pretty basic test for the representation of women, as is the Bechdel test. It does not make a movie automatically feminist. (Many movies/shows would not pass it).
In practice, I've only seen it used as commentary on movies generally, rather than as a reason to see or not see an individual movie.
This is both a false dichotomy and wildly implausible. The passage, or not, by individual movies of the test is comes up frequently, even if not as a reason to see, or not to see, the movies in question. And sometimes as that reason, even.
Substitute in 'sole reason', if you would? What I don't recall seeing is anyone suggesting that there's anything wrong with seeing a movie that fails the Bechdel test if it's a good movie, or you want to, particularly if there's some structural reason for there to be no women in the movie, or only one.
But yes, I have seen it applied to individual movies as part of an argument about how that movie was not a good movie in a sexist kind of way.
Well, "sole reason" makes the dichotomy starker, right?
particularly if there's some structural reason for there to be no women in the movie, or only one.
Hell in the Pacific fails the Bechdel test!!!!
Transformers passes. I guess Michael Bay is a feminist.
In honor of the 70th anniversary of Operation Market Garden, I'm going to watch the DVD of A Bridge Too Far that I picked up at a local video store's going out of business sale. I believe it fails the Bechdel test.
The guy in front of me at the counter at that sale was buying what appeared to be the store's entire porn section. Seriously, he had a shopping cart and needed multiple trips to get everything out to his car. I'll bet that a few of the movies he bought pass the Bechdel test.
Fun Home is one of my favorite comics of all time. It's right up there with Little Nemo in Slumberland and Watchmen.
I think I am of a certain age, but not of a certain orientation?
The Bechdel Test is pretty great at both an individual and population level, really. At an individual level it's great because you can apply it to movies that really, by any measure, should obviously pass the Bechdel Test (sprawling urban comedies, maybe) but don't. And then when, for some movies, it is not informative for good structural reasons (it's a period war movie! It only stars robots!) you can ask why it is that so very many movies have perfectly good structural reasons for not passing the Bechdel Test, and if that itself isn't a problem. Hooray! And then, if you want to get all pedantic, you can say "I'm only going to see movies that pass this test, because even if a given movie fails it for perfectly good reasons, it's part of a system that robustly fails to make movies that pass it, so hell with that."
So useful!
I mean personally I don't really think about it, but I'm a dude, you know? I like it when the robot dudes dude it up.
Pacific Rim causes insanity. People are so desperate to rehabilitate that movie that they're willing to invent new tests to do it.
The genius of the Bechdel test is how trivial of a thing to ask it is. All you have to do is have two women characters in the movie who aren't just love interests, and you've passed the test. Sure, it means that Das Boot isn't going to pass the test, but it dramatizes that Hollywood won't make a character female unless it's strictly dramatically required. A character won't be a girl unless she's The Girl.
How can you tell if the robot is a robot dude?
113: Does the robot have eyelashes?
Can we call that "the peep test"?
Somebody should make a movie where there's boy robots and girl robots, and the way you can tell them apart is the girl robots wear Ms. PacMan bows. But then it turns out that somebody is aimlessly switching the bows when no one is looking. Plus some action and explosions, I guess.
113: well, in Michael Bay movies they have robot genitals, but in general I suppose you just have to infer.
The genius of the Bechdel test is how trivial of a thing to ask it is.
Well, yes. Part of what's going on was that the original strip was a joke -- a bitter joke, but a joke. First the character explains the test, which sounds maybe a little tensely feminist, but not like a huge deal, and then says "I haven't seen a movie since Aliens."
I'm pretty sure that Under Siege 2: Dark Territory passes the Bechdel test. I'm thinking of when the female mercenary throws Capt. Linda Gilder off the speeding train.
My stepdaughter and I are not the only ones that wonder if BMO on Adventure Time is a boy or a girl (although I'm fairly certain the answer is neither)
||Will I resist the temptation to link to this? No, no, I will not.
Now a frail 96-year-old widow, Margot Wölk has overcome feelings of shame and broken decades of silence about her time as Hitler's food taster to tell her story to German television. "The food was always vegetarian," she told Berlin's RBB television channel, for a programme about her harrowing and sometimes horrific experiences, which was aired on Tuesday. "There were constant rumours that the British were out to poison Hitler. He never ate meat. We were given rice, noodles, peppers, peas and cauliflower," she recalled.|>|>
Jonah Goldberg beat you to that one.
I'm not saying she deserves reparations for her time as food taster, but I'm not not saying it.
||
I need to learn how to spend time in the kitchen without drinking too much beer. At this point, canning tomato sauce inevitably gives me a hangover.
|>
I was just trying to figure out whether Bellini's Norma passes the Bechdel test. At one point Norma and Adalgisa are discussing whether Norma should kill her children whose father is Pollione, who is a guy, so hm.
Star Wars wouldn't pass the test, but the first of the prequels would.
Are we sure R2-D2 and Chewbacca are male?
128: Neither of them has a bow, which conclusively settles it.
126: I'm pretty sure Dialogues of the Carmelites does, even if you count God as a man for the purposes of the test.
128: I think we can say that neither is a woman. (And, come to think, that arguably neither is capable of speech.)
(And, come to think, that arguably neither is capable of speech.)
LB demands full recursion in her beepy robot noises before she'll call it language.
128: Chewbacca is canonically male. R2D2 being half a Laurel & Hardy routine makes me think male, but reanalysing her as female is intriguing.
I didn't see this award recipient mentioned upthread -- sorry if I missed a mention. Domestic Workers Advocate Wins MacArthur Genius Award.
Poo has been organizing domestic workers, the majority of whom are women, for the last 15 years. She's given voice to a group of an estimated one to two million workers who have been largely ignored by society, meeting them in parks, on buses, and other gathering places to hear their stories, give advice and help develop a framework for legal standards for the industry.
After a challenging, multi-year legislative campaign led by Poo and others, New York state enacted in 2010 the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, which entitles workers to overtime pay, a day off each week, protection from discrimination, and three days paid leave per year. Poo is currently the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-director of Caring Across Generations.
Seems like a good start, though the benefits gained so far -- one day off per week, three days paid leave per year -- are stunningly skimpy.
||
Do other people's children kick them in the shins when they try to correct the kids spelling?
|>
That's why you don't give them handguns until they are at least ten.
Sally generally goes for the headlock.
What I'm saying is that I was hungover, and then a nine year old kicked me in the shins. These are things that lie at the intersection of "first world problems" and "problems losers have."
This is the "Feel Bad About Yourself!" thread, right?
Nine? Send them upstairs for a long timeout.
Hm, I don't know. What did the child misspell?
How hard does the word have to be for them to get a free kick?
Moby, Helpy-Chalk isn't a decadent European. There are no free kicks. He and his kids have to resolve their conflicts on the field of battle until one side drops from exhaustion.
143: I'm probably not the person to ask, having spent two hours this morning unsuccessfully trying to get my less motivated daughter to do her homework.
||Speaking of feeling bad, the Dodgers are getting totally slaughtered by the worst team in the National League. Chin up, Halford.|>
Oh what's that standings still say we'll be a minimum 2 games up, max 3 at the end of the day with 10 remaining after taking 2/3 from the Giants so this is me not caring about an 8-run first inning in Coors field from Carlos Frias..
Wait, is that not how I'm supposed to react when someone corrects my spelling?
Someone I know confessed to me today, in all earnestness, that he was bummed about never winning one. It was surprising to hear but not really illegitimate -- in fact, a friend of mine who has followed his work for years expressed the same sentiment earlier in the day.
Do other people's children kick them in the shins when they try to correct the kids spelling?
Did you say "shinning" when you meant "shining"?
re: 137
Proper coup de pied bas technique?