Frank Schreiber's List: Learning and Knowledge

• Ostrom, who has devoted her career to studying the interaction of people and natural resources, told the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences by telephone that she was surprised by the Nobel.
• The academy cited Ostrom "for her analysis of economic governance," saying her work had demonstrated how common property can be successfully managed by groups using it.

  • Case in point might be the original habitants of this country (Native Americans), who seemed to be about to live together in harmony with nature, without destroying or claiming ownership of the land and the wildlife.
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• Williamson was cited for arguing that markets and hierarchical organizations, such as firms, represent alternative governance structures that differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest.

   

  Issues of governance, or the rules by which authority is exercised in companies and economies, have been at the heart of the ongoing world economic crisis. The failure by boards of directors, for instance, to police excessive compensation, or prevent bonuses that reward excessive risk taking, can be considered a corporate governance issue.

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• For one thing, no one knows whether

  exposure to the absurd can help people with explicit learning, like memorizing French. For another, studies have found that people in the grip of the uncanny tend to see patterns where none exist — becoming more prone to conspiracy theories, for example. The urge for order satisfies itself, it seems, regardless of the quality of the evidence.

  Still, the new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking.

• It's Nobel Prize announcement week, and if you had Carol W. Greider, Elizabeth Blackburn, or Jack Szostak in your office pool, you're off to a good start (the trio will share this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine). As we await news of the rest of the winners, here are some stories about past Nobel laureates

• Swedish inventor and scholar Alfred Nobel created the Nobel prizes in his will, written in 1895, bequeathing his fortune to a fund that would honour "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."