Entertainment Overnight -- Prophetic

With the announcement earlier today that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, it seems a good time to put up another of his videos but also, to maybe once again point out how he was and this one song in particular was maybe a bit prophetic.

As one example, the people calling out climate change and man-made global warming, beside the scientists, would, I think, call this out as such:

Come gather 'round people where ever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone,
For the times they are a' changin'!
And then there's this. It seems perpetually true of government representatives.

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside and it's ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a' changin'!

Enough lecture for the evening.  Enjoy.

Born this day, 1909

Rita Levi-Montalcini was an Italian Nobel Laureate honored for her work in neurobiology. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor.

In 1986 the Nobel Prize for medicine went to Rita Levi-Montalcini.

In troubled times, during the dictatorship of Mussolini, Rita had secretly studied nerve fibers in a makeshift lab hidden in her home.

Years later, after a great deal of work, this tenacious detective of the mysteries of life discovered the protein that multiplies human cells, which won her the Nobel.

She was about eighty by then and she said, "My body is getting wrinkled, but not my brain. When I can no longer think, all I'll want is help to die with dignity."

A brilliant woman, a brilliant, achieved woman and she spent some time right here in Missouri at our own St. Louis Washington University (see first link, below):

After the war (WWII), her family returned to Turin and Levi-Montalcini resumed her position as an assistant at the University of Turin Institute of Anatomy. Two articles that Levi-Montalcini had published in foreign scientific journals interested Viktor Hamburger, head of the Zoology Department of Washington University in St. Louis.  In September 1947 Rita Levi-Montalcini accepted Hamburger’s invitation to collaborate with him as a research associate. Though she initially planned to stay at Washington University for less than one year, Levi-Montalcini stayed for thirty years. She was named an associate professor of Zoology in 1951, and a full professor in 1958. In the early 1960s Levi-Montalcini began dividing her time between St. Louis and Italy.

Links:

Rita Levi-Montalcini (b. 1909) - Washington University

Rita Levi-Montalcini - Wikipedia

Rita Levi-Montalcini - Biography - Medical Professional

Rita Levi-Montalcini - Biographical - Nobelprize.org

Rita Levi-Montalcini obituary | Science | The Guardian

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Revolutionary

A Profile of Rita Levi-Montalcini - Scientific American

Rita Levi-Montalcini | The Economist

Whole lotta' hatin' comin' on

The President is going to the United Nations first, it seems, on December 9, at the start of a 12 day session, then go to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize the next day.

Can you imagine how Glenn Beck, Rush "Porkulus" Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and all the folks at Faux News are salivating for this? I'm thinking they all figure they have a great deal to be thankful for.

They'll be trashing the UN, this Nobel Peace Prize--again or some more--and dissing on Mr. Obama all they can, every second.

Get ready. They're going to whip themselves into a holiday frenzy.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/us/politics/26climate.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

What the heck?

How would you like to have had press secretary Robert Gibbs' job this morning?

How would you like to be the one with the job of calling your boss--the President of the United States--to tell him the Press just informed you he was being given the Nobel Peace Prize?

Yowza.

I think both of them must have had the same first response. That is, "Are you kidding?"

I mean, I'm a big fan and long-time supporter of this President and a lot of his efforts, especially in view of the previous office-holder, but this President has only been in office 9 months.

And he's considering escalating the war in Afghanistan right now, keep in mind.

But apparently President Obama is such a refreshing change from President George W. Bush and his policies that so much of what he's done and is doing is so supportive and positive and fresh for the world that this group thought he needed to be rewarded for his work to date.

It must be a giddy day at the White House.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_nobel_peace

For a good, brief read, go here for the text of the Nobel citation for the President:
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-BarackObama/idUSTRE5981RA20091009?virtualBrandChannel=11604

Two updates:

Apparently the White House has notified the Nobel organization that President Obama will go in person to receive the award. This will be a great time for him to make a moving speech, imploring nations to work together.

And the harping and criticism from the Republican Party has already begun.

Sad. Really sad.

Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/obamas-nobel-prize-inspir_n_315167.html