Word: inventor
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...what many great actors have before him—that one can play essentially the same character in many films, provided that one is entertaining enough to get away with it. In Downey’s case, the intellectually brilliant, heavy-drinking and hard-hitting persona of American arms inventor Tony Stark of “Iron Man” proves surprisingly adaptable to 19th century England. That is to say, all that is needed is a change of accent. This is not a deep role, but a fun one, and Downey recognizes this, delivering lines like...
...Thomas Pynchon is his obvious successor in that department. But Pynchon figured out how to turn his back on the world with a wink and a Cheshire Cat smile. Salinger did it with a scowl. Then again, he was inventing the idea, and he bent over it with an inventor's sweaty intensity. (See the 100 best novels of all time...
...university has no idea under what circumstances it was donated. Or what about a giant rhinoceros skull? Is that worth keeping? How about the samples of earth dug up from the English Channel, pre-Chunnel? Hundreds of beautiful hand-drawn lecture slides made by the scientist Sir Ambrose Fleming, inventor of the diode? Or the slides of microscopic fossils, which don't seem to take up much space until you consider there's a quarter million of them in storage...
...greater degree of income equality, but it's certainly no guarantee. To take one small example, if we, as a society, decide that new areas of knowledge are eligible for strict patents and copyrights - and that that knowledge can then be cloistered within the lineage of the inventor - it will be easier for a parent to pass wealth onto a child and, as a consequence, keep that family richer than others. Economic systems matter. But we're still the ones in control...
After Alfred Nobel's death in 1896, his executors discovered that the inventor of dynamite had secretly set aside about 35 million Swedish kronor (about $225 million today) for the creation of five annual prizes to honor those who bestowed the "greatest benefit on mankind" in science, literature and diplomacy. On Oct. 9, President Barack Obama won the most coveted and controversial of them all: the Nobel Peace Prize...