Nobel prize scoop

[Aaron Yeater]

> >While we're on the subject, what's the background of the
> >MacArthur Foundation?
> 
> This is all from hazy memory, but I think MacA senior was an insurance exec
> in Chicago who wanted to set up in his will the "genius awards," etc.
> pretty much as they are now, but the foundation board suits tried to force
> a standard format on it. MacA's son fought them tooth and nail and won out.
> One of the few Forces of Good stories I know about.

just to fill in--the "John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation" 
operates the genius grants, but also gives large amounts of dough to 
public tv and radio, universities, etc.  the genius grants are, for 
better or worse, simply their most audacious activity...

aaron
***********************************************************

"One is tempted to argue that Cubism grew out of the inside of the 
nose for, indeed, it's interior is often a cavernous, clotted, 
intricate web, full of bogs, stalactites, stalagmites, filamentlike 
hairs."

			-Norman Mailer
			"Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man
			--An Interpretive Biography"