Nobel Laureates for 2013

 Dear Readers, we here at the Cosmic Heretic are not elitist snobs or academic misfits out of touch with the common man or the "real" world. But we tend to think that our populace has been dumbed-down, in respect to the obsession with celebrity and gossip-mongering. We should, at the very least, be as concerned and well-informed about those things that influence the quality of life on our planet for all of its inhabitants, i.e., plants, animals, and men. It is from this point of view that we offer this, our latest post, for your enjoyment and enlightenment.
          The oh-so prestigious Nobel Prizes were awarded December 10, 2013. There are six categories of excellence that are highlighted and each category carries a, cash prize of $1.2 million US dollars. In the field of physics, Francois Englert and Peter Higgs shared the honor for their discovery of the predicted subatomic particle (the Higgs-Boson particle) that accounts for how particles acquire mass; the prize for chemistry was awarded to, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, and Arieh Warshel, for demonstrating that complex chemical reactions can be modeled on computers; the prize for medicine was awarded to James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman, and Thomas C. Sudhof for their research that advances our understanding of how lipid vesicles work (vesicles are tiny membrane-enclosed sacs that transport materials within our cells); the literature prize was awarded to Alice Munro, for her mastery of the contemporary short-story; the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in economic sciences was awarded to Eugene F. Lama, Lars Peter Hansen, and Robert J. Shiller, for their empirical analysis of asset prices; and, finally, the much coveted Nobel Peace Prize went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons.
          Hopefully, one day, achievers of this magnitude will be as widely celebrated as actors, athletes, and musicians.