David Gendron just delivered the joke of the week:
“And how can you describe someone who’s good in both research and sales?”
“A Nobel Prize Winner!”
I don’t know whether he came up with it himself but it is hard-core. Thank you, David!
Who Is Good Both in Research and Sales?
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m shocked that I find this by myself. Thank you to mention me even though I’m a fucktard transphobe! 😉
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This is the best joke I’ve heard in a very long time. Congratulations!
I can’t wait to share it with my students tonight. We were just talking about who gets the Nobel Prizes in literature and why doesn’t and why. This will summarize the discussion. I will attribute the joke to you, of course.
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Treating the question seriously, there are many wonderful examples of individuals who enjoy both skills: Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs are just a few examples. And none of those won Nobel Prizes. Barack Obama is the best example of an individual who won the Prize without any research contribution whatever, despite having the privilege of being an affirmative action hire at the University of Chicago for 10 worthless years.
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I didn’t talk about the terrorist Nobel Prize, the so-called “peace”.
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What exactly was Bill Gates’ and Steve Jobs’ contribution to computer science or engineering *research*? Oh yeah, nothing.
If you have some time left over after your racist rage, feel free to do ‘research’ into the freedom-est states of the USA.
Clarissa, remember the link I posted about libertarians proclaiming Dakota or Idaho (I forget which) as the pinnacle of freedom in this country? That bit of insightful research came out of the hallowed halls of the Mercatus Center. This clown is employed there.
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I don’t see a racist rage at all here. Affirmation discrimination is a racist/sexist policy.
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Sorry, but if a Nobel Prize in Informatics would exist, Jobs and Gates would have been awarded with this prize.
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“Sorry, but if a Nobel Prize in Informatics would exist, Jobs and Gates would have been awarded with this prize.”
– Just yesterday I discovered a phenomenal story of who invented the equivalent of Google Translator in 1960s. This is not somebody whose name you know. Doing research and creating a company that feeds off the ideas created a long time ago by other people are two different things. They are both important but very different.
Should the American publishers who made Garcia Marquez famous share his Nobel?
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“Doing research and creating a company that feeds off the ideas created a long time ago by other people are two different things. ”
But the vast majority of Nobel Prize winners used ideas created a long term ago by other people.
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“But the vast majority of Nobel Prize winners used ideas created a long term ago by other people.”
– They used them to create more ideas, not to sell stuff. There is a difference.
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Check your facts before making a comment. I am not a clown. And I am not employed by Mercatus. And it is not racist to claim that our President spent 10 years at Chicago Law School without once publishing a paper. That is a top three law school. They sacrificed reputation to keep him on the faculty. Why else would they do that except to meet an affirmative action goal?
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OK, you’re right. My mistake. You’re not employed by Mercatus Center, an institute within the clown college that employs you.
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“Sorry, but if a Nobel Prize in Informatics would exist, Jobs and Gates would have been awarded with this prize.”
They don’t give out Nobels for successfully heading big companies. Not yet.
Steve Jobs may be a brilliant marketing strategist but we’re talking about contributions to computer research. He took other, fundamental research, and marketed it successfully. He didn’t make the fucking touchscreen himself, you know. Another way to think about it: if his efforts were published in peer-reviewed journals, what kind of journals would they be?
So, yeah, he’d in the ‘Hall of Fame’ (or whatever you call it) in Informatics. But, unless I’m mistaken, we’re talking original research here.
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“Steve Jobs may be a brilliant marketing strategist but we’re talking about contributions to computer research. He took other, fundamental research, and marketed it successfully. He didn’t make the fucking touchscreen himself, you know. Another way to think about it: if his efforts were published in peer-reviewed journals, what kind of journals would they be?”
– Exactly. For me, however, the word “research” in the original joke meant the kind of research you need to conduct to discover whose ass to kiss in order to get the prize. I have no idea how this works in sciences, but in literature, all literary prizes are the matter of negotiating, networking, and ass-kissing. It is a miracle that worthy writers even manage to get on the list.
Juan Goytisolo who is far superior to many of those who did get the Nobel will never get the prize because of his political views.
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“For me, however, the word “research” in the original joke meant the kind of research you need to conduct to discover whose ass to kiss in order to get the prize. I have no idea how this works in sciences, but in literature, all literary prizes are the matter of negotiating, networking, and ass-kissing.”
Exactly, and this is almost the same thing for the other Nobel Prizes.
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It is really sad than whenever I and my colleagues discuss who will be the next Nobel Prize winner in literature, we only talk about the political situation and never about the quality of the author’s work. Everybody just knows that it’s irrelevant.
Besides, one has to be ultra-sociable and friendly. I love Vargas Llosa, for instance, but it is so easy to give him the Nobel Prize and overlook other brilliant Hispanic writers. He’s like the most popular kid in class: has crowds of friends, has the right politics, is completely uncontroversial, worships the US. Well, at least he doesn’t despise Latin America as much as Garcia Marquez did. That’s something already.
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Stringer Bell, I am afraid that you are wrong again. I am retired from George Mason University. I direct The Locke Institute, which is an independent non-profit educational organization funded by very small foundations and private individuals. My Institute does not accept money from big donors or from anyone with political axes to grind. In this sense it is truly and unusually independent. I run it as a hobby. I take no income whatsoever from it.
George Mason University’s economics department, by the way has received two Nobel Prizes in Economic Sciences (James Buchanan 1986 and Vernon Smith 2002) more than many Ivy League universities. They have been awarded from Sweden which is not noted as a pro-capitalist country. So you may infer that they were hard won. Graduate students flood into the economics program from across the world. The graduate school in economics has more than 150 students, some two-thirds of them doctoral students.
I have chaired 125 successful doctoral dissertations between 1984 and 2012. Quite a good output for a clown, one might think. Again, you might do well to check your facts.
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