not aware of Nobel Laureate !! .... Schmidt's gold and Naomi's malaria

In ancient Greece, the laurel (Laurus nobilis) was sacred to Apollo and as such sprigs of it were fashioned into a crown or wreath of honour  for poets and heroes.  In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary awards or military glory. 

His work spoke loud enough for him to be heard as far away as in Oslo and be awarded 2014 Nobel Peace Prize .  Kailash Satyarthi’s has not been conferred with any in his home state, Madhya Pradesh. He has several awards to his credit. None from the State though. He has not been conferred any ‘Padma’ award 

……….. now he is a Nobel laureate - The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes created by the Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel.  It is a matter of pride and satisfaction that Kailash Satyarthi has been jointly awarded  for the struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.

Brian Paul Schmidt  is a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist in Australia.   Schmidt shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

North Dakota  is the 39th state of the United States, having been admitted to the union in 1889. The state capital is Bismarck, and the largest city is Fargo. Do you remember that it finds mention in Dan Brown’s ‘Digital Fortress’ as an anagram.  A report states that a small Town in North Dakota  surpassed Saudi Arabia in total oil and gas production, making the nation the number one consumer and producer of fossil fuels.

Mr Schmidt had to visit Fargo as his grandma wanted to see the Nobel medal.  In his own words – ‘You would think that carrying around a Nobel prize would be uneventful, and it was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the X-ray machine. I could see they were puzzled. It was in my laptop bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X-rays — it’s completely black. And they had never seen anything completely black’.

TSA security guards  put Schmidt through intensive questioning – and the following conversation ensued (as reported in newspapers)

'They said, "What's in the box?"; 'I said, "a large gold medal," as one does.

'So they opened it up and they said, "What's it made out of?" ; 'I said, "gold."

'And they're like, "Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?"; '"The King of Sweden".

'"Why did he give this to you?"'; '"Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating." At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humour.

'I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, "Why were you in Fargo?"'……….. Schmidt, a Harvard graduate who lectures at the Australian National University, described the encounter as he joined physicians celebrating the construction of one of the largest observatories in the world, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), due to open in 2020 in Chile.

~ and if that is not enough – here is what the supermodel feted for her stunning looks and sleek style. It appears Naomi Campbell is not a role model when it comes to spelling, following an ‘epic fail’ on social media when she sent a congratulatory message to 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai in which she called the new Nobel Peace Prize winner ‘Malaria’. The well-meaning post sent via Instagram said: ‘Congratulations malaria on your #noblepeaceprize #2014 #Respect #joy #ithalljuststarted.’ 

Miss Campbell, 44, not only got Malala’s name wrong but also misspelt Nobel as ‘noble’. There was a third error too, as the hashtag should have read #itsalljuststarted.

The schoolgirl became the youngest Nobel prize winner due to her courageous campaigning for education for women after being shot by the Taliban in her native north-west Pakistan. Now living in Birmingham, she and Miss Campbell worked together on social media in the campaign to rescue the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

It is possible that the misspelling of Malala’s name was the result of an autocorrect function on the model’s mobile phone. Miss Campbell, who has 294,000 Twitter followers, has now deleted the erroneous message and tweeted: ‘Darlings my iPhone and I are at odds it seems I type a word it seems to spit out another, forgive me…’

To many, English is a foreign language … !!

With regards – S. Sampathkumar                                          14^th Oct 2014.