Word: macarthur
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...Genius" is a term we tend to use all too liberally. But since 1981, this lofty club has had an unofficial gatekeeper: the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, whose MacArthur Fellowship is widely known as "the genius grant." (The foundation, which was created in 1978 and which annually distributes nearly $300 million in grants, avoids using the term, as it incorporates only "a singular characteristic of intellectual prowess" that doesn't reflect their recipients' assorted talents...
...grant was first awarded to 21 individuals in June 1981. But the idea had been germinating since 1978, when a MacArthur board member, William Kirby, brought to his cohorts' attention an article from the American Heart Journal in which a doctor named George Burch argued a fund should be set up to support individuals whose contributions to society would multiply if they were unshackled from financial constraints. With the encouragement of John D. MacArthur's son, Roderick, the Fellows Program was formed...
...apply to be a MacArthur Fellow. Since the program's inception, its selection process has gone largely unchanged: an anonymous, unpaid nominating squad offers a list of candidates (now numbering as many as 800), which the foundation's staff whittles down to 100 or so nominees. A selection committee - a dozen or so anonymous individuals, who generally serve three-year terms - then spends "the better part of a year" devouring the nominees' work, before submitting a list of suggested recipients to the foundation's board...
...Wallace, who won a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1997, was a tennis prodigy and a math whiz (his Amherst philosophy major focused on modal logic, whatever that is). His thoughts sprawled beyond the boundaries that most writers observe into notes and equations, one sentence going on for so many pages even Faulkner would have demanded a period. He seemed curious about everything: he wrote nonfiction articles about food and porn conventions and Dennis Hastert and women's tennis. His essay for the New York Times' Play Magazine celebrating "Federer as Religious Experience" is a classic of sports writing...
...force. They quickly swept through the outmanned and outgunned South Korean army. Even the intervention of U.S. soldiers five days later, assisted by a United Nations force, could not stop the advance until it had reached the Pusan perimeter, in the country's extreme southeast corner. But General Douglas MacArthur's bold amphibious counterattack at Inchon, behind the enemy lines, rolled back the North Koreans and resulted in the capture of their capital, Pyongyang. Just as the war appeared to be winding down, Chinese armies poured across the Yalu River, once again reversing the tide. They too were pushed back...