Well, we've come to the end of this year's Nobel Prize offering. The prizes for the sciences (medicine, physics, chemistry, economics) remain a fairly solid indicator of good, hard science. (Although, the awards tend not to be for very recent work)

However, the prizes for Literature and Peace have long since become just plain ridiculous. This year's winner for "Literature" is an extreme lefty feminist. See this article about this author who won't be replacing Dickens on my bookshelf any time soon.

And this year's winner for "Peace" is an environmental activist. See this article for more on her, shall we say, unique views. And don't forget Yassir Arafat won the Peace Prize in 1994. Talk about Orwellian.