They flow in.  I gotta keep off-boarding them.

The Nobel prize in literature is just trolling us now.  Nice piece, with this interesting cultural observation:

The Nobel Prize’s overarching crisis is not unique. Once the ultimate arbiter of great literature, it has struggled to remain relevant at a time of cultural fragmentation. It could not continue on its historical course—awarding unknown European poets who would fail to stir excitement in the media (and social media)—and remain relevant. In 2016, the Nobel Committee took a daring and controversial step in awarding the prize to Bob Dylan, a musician, and the lesson it seemingly learned is an old one: There’s no such thing as bad publicity. Giving it to Handke after an extensive public relations push aimed at convincing the world that it was changing its ways can only be read as a finger in the eye. Perhaps the Nobel Committee’s main mission these days is not to diversify or evolve, but to troll. 

Here's a critique of the Nobel prize for literature going to two Europeans, after a promise by representatives of the Nobel crew that they wouldn't be quite so Eurocentric in the future.  

In contrast, the economics Nobel seems to be given to worthy scholars who are not really controversial, except to people who don't have a problem with poverty. What was their particular contribution?  It was: 

"an experimental approach to development economics. They built a scientific framework and used hard data to identify causes of poverty, estimate the effects of different policies and then evaluate their cost effectiveness. Specifically, they developed randomised control trials (RCTs) to do this. They used these to study different policies in action and to promote those that were most effective." 

Congrats, nerds!  (I say that in a loving way.)

Not sure this is a great piece on Newman, but it at least talks about some of the issues that make him an interesting modern--and some would say perhaps the first post-modern--saint.