Nobel Prize

[Armat]

Iranian Reformers Hail Nobel Prize WinnerIranian Reformers Seek Strength From Lawyer-Activist Shirin Ebadi Winning 2003 Nobel Peace Prize

The Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran Oct. 10 — The Nobel Peace Prize award for Iranian lawyer-activist Shirin Ebadi may do more than place her in the rarified company of history-shapers such as Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa. It could hand Iranian reformers what they've been craving: a leader with the clout to rattle the entrenched theocracy. Ebadi who also is Iran's first female judge was praised around the world as a courageous champion of political freedom after the Norwegian Nobel Committee honored her Friday for promoting peaceful and democratic solutions in the struggle for human rights.The prize, announced Friday in Oslo, Norway, gave hope to the dispirited reformers challenging Iran's ruling clerics that the 56-year-old lawyer's newfound prominence may breathe life into their tired ranks.

 

This is really great. I believe that any moves Iranians make towards free democratic state will help Armenia as well and the region in general

[Azat]

This is really great. I believe that any moves Iranians make towards free democratic state will help Armenia as well and the region in general

Unless one distant neighbor sees those moves as a threat and asks uncle Sam to go to war with them.

[Armat]

I believe all politicts are local.Armenians and Iranians are to remain friends as long as Turkey remains the regional key player.Iran is a great economic potential for Armenia althouth at the present situation that potential is not there yet. Just imagine how many starbucks Armenians can open in free Iran

[Armat]

Slightly unrelated subject. The Dunken Doughnuts chain started here in New England by a Portuguese immigrant in seventies. He started small one shop and gave all the jobs to Portuguese immigrants and after much success the business kept growing and expanding. Now forty percent DD is own by Portuguese Americans. I love stories like this.

[Armen]

The following article is from Christianity Today magazine, and is

located at:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/140/51.0.html

 

 

Did Nobel Committee Ignore MRI Creator Because of Creationism?

Plus: The faith-based initiative hold-up, freedom to worship at home,

and other stories from online sources around the world.

Compiled by Ted Olsen | posted 10/10/2003

 

 

Not everybody on the Nobel Committee loves Raymond Damadian

While today's Nobel Peace Prize announcement will no doubt reignite

discussion over whether Islam is a religion of peace, and may cause some

to ask what happened to the buzz that Pope John Paul II would win,

others are still discussing the controversy over this year's Nobel Prize

in medicine.

 

The Nobel Committee on Monday announced that the prize would be awarded

to Paul C. Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield, for their discoveries

concerning magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI scans.

 

But when you ask Google who invented the MRI, the most common answer is

Raymond V. Damadian. What's up? The controversy has been percolating,

and The Wall Street Journal reported last year that "a ferocious battle

in the scientific community over who gets credit" probably held up an

MRI-related Nobel for years.

 

A full-page ad in yesterday's The Washington Post said the Nobel

committee was "attempting to rewrite history" and "did one thing it has

no right to do: It ignored the truth."

 

Likewise, Damadian told Newsday, "I can't escape the fact that I started

it all. ... My concern is the distortion by the Nobel Committee to write

me out of the history of the MRI. Every history book from now on will

say the MRI is Lauterbur and Mansfield."

 

"I know that had I never been born, there would be no MRI today," he

told The Washington Post.

 

Many scientists agree, but some suggest that Damadian's self-promotion

may have hurt him. He's "sometimes flamboyant," NPR science

correspondent Richard Knox told All Things Considered yesterday.

 

But Knox, along with Reason magazine's Ronald Bailey, suggested another

reason Damadian may have been disregarded: He's a devout Christian (see

this 1997 profile in Christianity Today sister publication Christian

Reader) who believes in creationism. In fact, he's on the Technical

Advisory Board for the Institute for Creation Research, and on the

reference board for Answers in Genesis's upcoming Creation Museum.

 

"He's identified by many web sites as a prominent creation scientist,"

Knox said. "I have no first-hand knowledge of his beliefs, but it's fair

to say that most scientists are not creationists and tend to look

askance at scientists who believe that way, but it's really impossible

to know if the Nobel Committee took that into account."

 

Bailey similarly writes, "I have no inside information, but I wonder if

the committee was swayed by the fact that Damadian, although a brilliant

inventor, is apparently a creation science nut. In ironic contrast,

Lauterbur's current research is on the chemical origins of life."

 

The Nobel Committee, meanwhile, says it doesn't talk about why certain

people don't receive the prizes. It only talks about why winners do.

[America-Hye]

So Damadian's "IGNORANT CHRISTIANITY" is what did him in. If he would only apply the same brilliant analytical methods to his faith as he did to his science, he would realize that Jesus lived on this earth in his corporal form, was born of woman, and had three beautiful children, one of whom produced grandchildren of his. One of his descendants married into a family that later began the Merovingian dynasty. His decendants today belong to a super-secret global society, who fear the wrath and power of the Church hierarchy. Where is his "INFORMED CHRISTIANITY?"

[Arpa]

What's so noble about Nobel anymore!

We have known well that the Nobel prize is heavily politicized.

Politics most foul!!

Many say that Damadian was jilted beacuse of his fiercely devoted Christian faith, in fact some articles say that he passed over because he is a creationist and that any scientist worth his fame cannot be a creationist. Hey! It is his five cents he can belkieve anything he wants. How did his religious fervor diminish his scientific value?

I hope he sues everybody's pants off!

 

Damadian. One of many sites.

http://reason.com/links/links100903.shtml

 

Politics most foul again!

Granted, maybe this lady is worth it and merits the prize but you can rst assured that there may have another million who also do. Why she now?

Politics. This is nothing short of inciting a revolution in Iran. That may not be such bad thing in my book, those Idioollahs have outlived their welcome for quite sometime. Yet again using the noble name of Nobel for politics smells as foul as a cesspool.

 

Shirin Ebadi. One of many sites.

http://www.iht.com/articles/113173.html

[gamavor]

Lech Walensa said that The Pope deserves the Nobel prize more than anybody else and I fully agree with him. The Pope had a crucial role in toppling the communism and many other noble deeds, but it seems to me that these days the Noble Prize is just continuation of politics in different spheres.

[Sip]

But isn't Nobel Peace Prize all about politics to begin with? Seems to me it is inherently supposed to be political. But of course the scientific ones should not be.

[gamavor]

Yes, politics of priorities. In the science filed everyone should know that whatever great thing was invented was by Anglos, and Noble Prize for politics and peace is reserved for Protestants, reformed Methodists, sectarians and Islamic revolutionists.

[Armat]

Perhaps William Saroyan was right rejecting the award however I wander had he accepted the award if that would of made him even more exposed. I find many Saroyan's books in used book stores collecting dust...Perhaps it is just passing of time, who reads anything from his generation anyway.

[DominO123]

Damadian lost the Nobel, just because he is a creationist, no matter what some may claim to justify it, the fact remain that Damadian first papers not only on the idea of the MRI, but his experiment preceded everything that Lauterbur has published or even tried on the subject.(see: Tumor detection by nuclear magnetic resonance. in Science. 1971 March 19, dating years before anything Lauterbur has tried).

 

The main reason it is said that he didn't recieved the prize is because it was Lauterbur that made the scanning of tissue practicle and usable by introducing the B-field gradient, for the imaging. The amazing thing here is that, he had that idea, when he was watching one of his students trying to reproduce Damidian experiment, he thought that using such gradiant would leed to have a more accurate image, we even don't know in the first place, if it could be that it was his student that proposed it.

 

BUT, the T1-T2(delta relaxation(variationg between the two relaxation time)), was the first time used by Damadian(he's the one having the idea), he used this process, which is the signal used most of the time even now, if his methodology was not compleat and unusuable like the appologists claim, why is it still used the majority of times?

[DominO123]

Beside that, the gradient technic as we know now has been worked out by astronomers recycling themselves in medical field, making Lauterbur a less important figure considering what are the MRI of our present times.

[MJ]

From what I understand, Damadian owns the patent on the relevant technology. One can guess that throughout his entrepreneurial endeavors he has made a pretty good chunk of money. Anyone who knows how the academia functions would know that it never forgives another academician making money as the result of his/her academic research.

 

It is an old and basic human trait – not that commendable. One can also conjecture that Damadian has gotten what he wanted.

[Sip]

Anyone who knows how the academia functions would know that it never forgives another academician making money as the result of his/her academic research.

High-tech may have been an exception to that... maybe because everyone was making millions? But of course many since then have lost all. I'd say probably the main difference is that "high tech" is inherently purely money driven as (I'm guessing) many of the other "pure" sciences are searching for some truth.

 

But then again, things like "drug research", "bio-med technologies", etc also seem to be $$$$ driven a lot of times.

[Stormig]

They gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Arafat - enough said about politics!

Well, if we live long enough, fifty years from now we might get to find out WHY they made the decision they did.

[DominO123]

High-tech may have been an exception to that... maybe because everyone was making millions? But of course many since then have lost all. I'd say probably the main difference is that "high tech" is inherently purely money driven as (I'm guessing) many of the other "pure" sciences are searching for some truth.

 

But then again, things like "drug research", "bio-med technologies", etc also seem to be $$$$ driven a lot of times.

Damadian has conversed with creationist magazines directions, having himself refered in those works, with his big mouth and Ego, he didn't made things easy either.

 

But again, those prizes should be given for what one has achieved.

[MJ]

Sip,

 

High-tech of pharmaceutical research is primarily done outside academia - in corporate environment. For example, academia was perhaps a decade behind Hughes Aircraft, Lockheed, IBM, Microsoft, Bell Labs, Pfizer, etc.

 

If there were some endeavors in computer science departments in mid 90s, anything that at least on the level of perceptions or expectations lead to commercial outcome, was immediately “incorporated” at a point of “no-return” back to academia.

[America-Hye]

There are unwritten rules in academia, that one must be low-key. This is a residue of the Anglo-centric culture of Western academia. Damadian is brash, and has involved himself in issues that are anthema to traditional scientific beliefs. He did not play the game by it's rules and got burned. I, for one, wonder how a brilliant man like he could have gotten roped in by these creationists. Yet, this is not rare for an Armenian, if you understand the Armenian psyche. This psyche warp is the essence of our failure as a people to transcend the geo-politcal qaugmire we find ourselves in. We are for the most part not a pragmatic people, but ideologues.

[Sip]

If there were some endeavors in computer science departments in mid 90s, anything that at least on the level of perceptions or expectations lead to commercial outcome, was immediately “incorporated” at a point of “no-return” back to academia.

I definitely agree with you with the addition that most "academic" institutions also seem to be organized as collections of tiny (and sometimes large) corporations with the professors being the CEO, CFO, FCO, CMO (now I'm making up acronyms) who deals with the venture capitalists (aka funding institutions).

 

This is probably true with most engineering fields as well but probably the ultra-short idea->prototype->product->profit/disaster cycle with "computing" makes it so different (not to mention the exponentail leaps in terms of the advancing underlying technologies).

 

So now going back to Nobel (scientific), I was always under the impression that the prize is to reward a lifetime of invaluable scientific contribution(s) in a specific domain. But the question that comes up is what if motivations were not purely scientific and merely financial ... does that still merit an award? I would say probably but I'm not sure.

[Armat]

There are unwritten rules in academia, that one must be low-key. This is a residue of the Anglo-centric culture of Western academia. Damadian is brash, and has involved himself in issues that are anthema to traditional scientific beliefs. He did not play the game by it's rules and got burned. I, for one, wonder how a brilliant man like he could have gotten roped in by these creationists. Yet, this is not rare for an Armenian, if you understand the Armenian psyche. This psyche warp is the essence of our failure as a people to transcend the geo-politcal qaugmire we find ourselves in. We are for the most part not a pragmatic people, but ideologues.

Hagarag

you are obviously generalizing an entire Armenian people. I think given the circumstances Armenians are mostly pragmatic people. That is the reason that in business and academia Armenians succeed. Even under the Byzantines and the Ottoman rule Armenians did very well establishing healthy business communities (much to the envy of none Armenians) and still operate in that mode. One can say the opposite that perhaps we are too pragmatic in our survival that we collectively shortchange long-term goals in Diaspora and in Armenia. Before anything solution to every problem starts as an idea and creative thinkers could be described as idealists.

Edited October 13, 2003 by Armat

[America-Hye]

Armat,

 

I am not referring to Armenians as individuals not being pramatic, but COLLECTIVELY. Their success in business, professions and academia is apparent even in my family. However, Armenians collectively have a will of steel. Do you not think that Armenia today would not be stronger had the Armenians let go of their Christian faith and joined the Islamic world? This adherence to faith is indicative of a collective will that is not pragmatic. It sometimes goes much too far. There are few Western cultures other than our own that would treat my bisexuality with such contempt. (I do not consider the African-American, Latino or Islamic cultures Western as these veterans of enduring discrimination are some of the most vehement tormators of those of alternative sexuality).

[Twilight Bark]

So many good points made here.

 

Indeed, academia is like a cult with plenty of unwritten rules about how to conduct oneself. It's not that academia is any less "vulgar" than the corporate world in terms of money, power, and all that. But there is a theatrical role-play that has to be accepted by the "priests" (err ..., I mean academics). Having said that, a lot of eccentric behavior will be tolerated if the fellow cleric (sorry, "professor") brings in a lot of cash and fame to the institution. The day the money dries up, so will the supply of tolerance and good will towards the brash eccentric (or anyone else for that matter). Another aspect of the cult system is the indispensibility of forming one's own "mafia" (sorry, I mean "network"). If outside of academia, one needs to either belong to quasi-academic "campuses" (like the research arms of Bell Labs of yesteryear, IBM, and the like), or cultivate excellent relations with the "church" (darn, my tongue is slipping so often today; I mean "academia"), by paying tribute to the proper gods and donating generously.

 

Damadian apparently did not follow any of those rules all that well.

 

As for Hagarag's comment of Armenians being un-pragmatic ideologues. My feeling is that Armenians are typically hyper-realist hyper-pragmatists, but cannot shake off one cultural trait: they are also hyper-individualists that still run, in their mind's eye, a "small business" or a "shop" in the village or neighborhood. While there are many Armenians thriving in "collective" settings such as academia and corporations, a disproportionate number of Armenians prefer to be running the show in a small operation rather than melt into a big hierarchy, perennially remaining "outsiders". As a gross generalization, we make lousy leaders, and at the same time do not like to be led either.

 

TB

[Armat]

Do you not think that Armenia today would not be stronger had the Armenians let go of their Christian faith and joined the Islamic world?

No it would have been total futility. Armenians excepting Islam would of wiped out an entire culture that existed for centuries. We probably would have not even existed now as a nation and perhaps became another Anatolian natives without a country much like Kurds. Turkufication was imminently more dangerous then Christianity. I am very hopeful that the best for Armenia is yet to come.

Another aspect to this is pure psychology.

Gurdieff mentions that one’s faith is connected to one’s conscious and once particular belief system is established it is extremely difficult to replace with another’s. It is equivalent to losing one’s life metaphorically. These phenomena are not only true for Armenians but the rest of religious communities as well.

[America-Hye]

Yes, I see that the Turks are still imperialists. They have subjugated Christian and Moslem alike. They are itching to get their hands on the Kirkuk oil fields and to usurp norhern Iraq as part of a greater Turkey. Just look at their tactics in Cyprus, the Aegean, Kurdish areas, Thrace, Alexandretta. An expansionist nation. I agree that we would be no better off had we turned our backs on Christianity.