Holy crap indeed. What's this person do?
I didn't know you were friends with John Zorn.
Seriously, though, I bet it's this person:
Jennifer Richeson, 34, social psychologist, Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Richeson investigates how race and gender affect the way people think, feel and behave.
Hey, I had one of the "Way Things Work" books! Neat.
I know who I'd pick if I had to bet, but it's more difficult to narrow down than I imagined it would be.
Guys, I could have said who it was, if I wanted it to be known.
Ogged, comment 2 was better when it read "Genius type stuff. You wouldn't understand.".
If ogged is friends with David Macaulay, I will make him a castle out of sugarcubes.
"Genius type stuff. You wouldn't understand."
But there was no call for taking a dig at you, so I had second, shorter, thoughts.
Yes, but there aren't that many of them, so I wanted to see how big a risk you were taking.
1. Like that's ever stopped you before.
2. I know that, rather than taking a dig at me, you were exploiting an opportunity. It's called ribbing, I think.
w/d, I looked over the list and came to the same conclusion you did, that it's not very easy to narrow down, so I thought I'd share, since it's kind of a big deal.
"My friend is one of these 25 people pictured with ages and other biographical information. But no guessing."
1. Like that's ever stopped you before.
You have no idea.
My friend who just won five hundred grand and a great deal of esteem, no less.
Well, feel free to guess. You can't fight human nature. I just won't confirm or deny.
I'll honor the request not to guess (on preview: will still), but I think the lesson here once again is that secrecy is a bitch, because you often can't tell people awesome things. Especially the awesome things.
The late King of Tonga was my piano teacher.
So what's the opinion you no longer hold?
Ogged's been hanging out with George Saunders.
George Saunders responded in detail to a friend who e-mailed him about a long-running dispute we had about one of his stories. I approve of George Saunders.
I think the answer to the question in the post is "reverse schadenfreude."
I approve of George Saunders.
Who doesn't approve of George Saunders? Fat men and Nazis, that's who.
According to somebody, the word is Erfolgtraurigkeit, but I think there's got to be something better.
Before he was king. After, he didn't much have time to teach piano.
A MacArthur prize! did they leave the cake out in the rain?
According to somebody, the word is Erfolgtraurigkeit, but I think there's got to be something better.
Good Lord, man, what could be better than Erfolgtraurigkeit? In English, it's nice too: success-sadness.
Year after year, I'm totally stumped by their choices for visual/material artists. OK, Julie Mehretu last year, she was a given.
So what's the physical prize? I imagine one of those elementary-school field-day ribbons and an oversized check.
The prize is certified geniusness, Armsmasher. I believe Wile E. Coyote was the first recipient.
I would have thought there should be an 's' in Erfolgtraurigkeit. (People other than w-lfs-n may guess where.)
My nomination, on the theory that we should offer German words as much respect as Germans do English words, would be Freudenschade. Backwards schadenfreude.
One doesn't apply for MacArthurs; they just swoop down out of nowhere, declare you a genius, and give you a half million dollars, right? God. That's better than twenty Prince Charmings.
Guys, I could have said who it was, if I wanted it to be known.
Well, that settles it. He doesn't want us to guess.
I say its the surgeon who put bar codes on scalpels, thus bringing medical science into the Eighties.
He's probably also the guy who figured out that patients going in for leg amputations should write "Not This Leg" on their good leg with a magic marker.
We didn't go to medical school, so we can't understand that kind of high-powered stuff.
Ain't the Internets wonderful?
"On a pedantic note, compounds with "Erfolg-" tend to have a filler consonant "s", so "Erfolgstraurigkeit" (wenn überhaupt!)"
It's a very rare word, rarer with the "s" than without.
Link that might possibly actually work
Actually the word was made up by a journalist, it seems.
damn.
I *knew* I shoulda took that job as fiction editor at Seventeen magazine.
congrats to your pal, ogged.
26: Excellent.
And, holy hell, I know one of them from college. May I have a corner of your Erfolgstraurigkeit, ogged?
oh christ, mrh. This is really starting to get competitively one-uppy.
Look, I know one of them from the newspaper, alright?
That doesn't mean I want any of your Folgers what's-its german omelette abomination. No thanks.
My guess is that Ogged knew Matias Zaldarriaga, 35, the Harvard cosmetologist,.
40
is this continuing that thread about good hair salons in Boston?
I find that an Ivy League education does make one better at giving a manicure -- but a genius?
I know, like, thirty goddamn geniuses.
Congratulations to your friend, and I'm so pleased for David Macalulay. I was brought up on his architectural books, City, Castle, Cathedral, Pyramid, and I love The Way Things Work. He also did a book of architectural cartoons I found on a friend's father's bookshelf when I was a kid that I thought at the time was the funniest thing ever -- an upside-down, wrecked version of a triumphal arch labelled L'Arc du Defeat.
But I've never met him. I simply admire from afar. I don't know anyone famous.
Oh, and Atul Gawande who writes those doctoring articles in the New Yorker. Cool.
I think the MacArthur people should have called me first, so I didn't find out about it on the blog. So tacky.
Man, it's been a good year for Terence Tao: first the Fields Medal and now this. The Fields Medal is probably more exciting, but it sure don't pay as well.
1.) 47 is awesome.
2.) Where is the best list of them with their bios? On the radio this morning they announced the Harvard cosmetologist, because that's a local person, but not many of the others. I think that's kind of unfair to the other twenty two. Should I just go to the foundation's website? Or is there a better, unofficial source for information?
3.) What is the word for feeling deliriously happy, proud (envious?) and a failure? This is an important feeling and should have its own word.
My ambition in life is to be the only person ever to win a MacArthur prize and a Darwin award. For the same achievement, if possible.
49.2: Foundation site should do.
(One of my college classmates won one seven years ago. So I've had lots of time to make my peace with failuredom.)
47: It's you!
(It's terrible that this guy is a genius who obviously does a lot to help poor people and I'm making fun of his moustache. It's the failuredom speaking.)
I believe that I went to school with two Macarthur fellows, Chuck Bigelow and Don Day. But I'm 60 so it's not so painful. I knew Don very slightly, and Chuck only by appearance.
I can't believe that I just wrote cosmetologist instead of cosmologist.
That list is incredibly Cambridge, MA-centric this year. (Northeastern too--not many Californians). There are two Harvard professors, a surgeon at a major Harvard teaching hospital (okay, that's technically Boston), and a professor at MIT. That's four out of 25, almost 20%.
People sneer at cosmetology. Perhaps this will change their mind.
Jack Handy doubted that there ever would be a Nobel Prize in panelling, but that just shows how small-minded he is under his hip, "humorous" veneer.
Erfolgtraurigkeit
I don't think this works, because it doesn't get the really happy part.
He's probably also the guy who figured out that patients going in for leg amputations should write "Not This Leg" on their good leg with a magic marker.
That doesn't work. Inevitably, the "Not" will get covered up or rubbed off somehow, and they'll amputate that leg. When the patient revives, he or she will look down at their stump and notice the faint "Not" still visible right above the cut. Cue laugh track. Or fade to black. Whatever.
And I like all Macaulay's stuff, especially did as a kid (I think my brother and I constantly had Castle checked out from the public library for a good decade or so). And while I like the idea of his The Way Things Work, I found the execution somewhat disappointing.
"Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies."
--(who else but) Gore Vidal
I don't think this works, because it doesn't get the really happy part.
Good point. Erfolgtraurigkeit is really about the Gore Vidal "every time one of my friends succeeds, a little something in me dies" thing, the shame-filled envy of someone else's good fortune.
Also, somebody needs to attach a breathalyzer to my keyboard, because I totally dicked up my own link, which should have taken you here.
Congrats to your friend, Ogged.
All y'all bitching about your genius friends should spare a thought for those of us who don't even *know* any geniuses.
How is it that nobody has jumped in screaming, "but you know us, B!"?
This is the low self-esteem blog, slol.
No, I think it's the smartass-prone-to-periodic-fits-of depression blog. Which is not quite the same thing.
Oh, I'm so glad that you got that, slol. Hehehe.
Now I'm curious. Ogged, did you or someone else write "Not This Kidney" on the "wrong" side before you went under?
How about "No Amputations Today Please" on all your limbs and "Keeping This, Thanks" on your emotive member?
Can't be too careful.
Ogged, did you or someone else write "Not This Kidney" on the "wrong" side before you went under?
Dude, one of my relatives is a personal injury lawyer (the kind fighting for truth and justice, of course) and he stupidly told my mother horror stories about wrong organ removal. They really did want me to write something on myself, but I decided to risk it.
There was a TAL a while back that claimed that some nurses pair up and promise to monitor each other should one have to stay overnight in a hospital. Apparently, there are so many mistakes that occur in a hospital that they simply don't trust that they will survive a visit absent having a friend monitor the visit. The show made me terrified of hospitals.
All of which is to say that ogged is clearly an adrenaline junkie.
The people who told me the "Not This Leg" story were pathologists. In a country as large as ours you're going to have some wrong amputations.
There was also a story about a woman who died in elective surgery who died because the oxygen tank had nitrogen in it. Breathing nitrogen only you don't suffocate, you just feel increasingly weak and sleepy.
68: That woman probably should have written "Make Mine Oxygen" on her face before the procedure.
If Ogged's mother were a real Old Country lady, there could have been a great comedy routine, with this slick, razorcut lawyer in aligator shoes and an illiterate peasant woman in a burkha doing a tag team routine on some poor honky doctor.
I don't think this works, because it doesn't get the really happy part
How about Erfolgtraurigkeitfreude? There must be a few more words we can slip in there.
Erfolgtraurigkeitfreude?
Makes it sound as if you're happy to be sad that someone's successful, where as ogged is happy and sad.
And while I like the idea of his The Way Things Work, I found the execution somewhat disappointing.
I've had that a bit with The (New) Way Things Work, but my kids still ask for it for bedtime reading every 3rd or 4th week. So it seems to work for them with some ad-lib explanation.
I love how the short biographies is all about new! transforming! compelling! revolutionary! combinatorics! profound! stuff. That's quite commendable, MacArthur kind of stuff. But Ogged, none of them were ever fucked by bears.
Apropos of nothing, apparently if Ogged had eaten more farmed salmon, he might have avoided that whole kidney cancer thing.
none of them were ever fucked by bears.
I've come to believe that Washington's bear-fucking may have been apocryphal.