Alfred Nobel and His Prizes

Alfred Nobel was a man of great contrasts. A Swede born in Stockholm in 1833, he spent most of his life abroad. The inventor of dynamite and other explosives, he was even called a 'merchant of death', but aimed to promote world peace. A skilled chemist, he wrote poetry in Swedish and English and prose in other languages too. The son of a man who twice went bankrupt, he became one of the wealthiest people in the Western world.

His great wealth did not bring him happiness, however. He never married, suffered from loneliness and was in delicate health from childhood. Only in the last three years of his life did he have a home of his own in Sweden, where he had bought the Bofors (pr Boo-fosh) armaments factory. He nevertheless died in the Italian resort town of San Remo on December 10 1896. And December 10 is the day on which the Nobel Prizes are ceremonially awarded each year, the Peace Prize in Oslo, the others at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.

His will was written in Swedish without legal guidance, which let to much delay in its implementation as it was disputed. It stipulated that the greater part of his estate should be invested and the income distributed in the form of prizes to those conferring the greatest benefit on mankind during the preceding year in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and what he called 'brotherhood among nations' but which we know as the Peace Prize.

There is no doubt that Nobel had a great interest in each of these fields. Most intriguing is the Peace Prize, which is awarded by a committee of the Norwegian Storting or Parliament, the reason being that Norway was joined to Sweden in a union under the Swedish Crown during Nobel's lifetime. He fondly believed that when the great power of explosives was understood, nobody would use them for military purposes. He knew from personal experience what devastation they could cause. In 1864 the factory where he had been studying nitroglycerine was blown up, killing everyone in it including his 21-year-old brother Emil. Nevertheless, he maintained that his factories could put an end to wars sooner than any of the peace congresses that were held.

He was also influenced by the Austrian Baroness von Sutter, a pioneer in the peace movement who was herself awarded the Peace Prize in 1905. But as with the Literature Prize, some of the laureates selected in Oslo, such as Henry Kissinger and Le Duc To in 1973 and Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat in 1978, have been highly controversial, while others generally considered to be worthy of the prize, such as Mahatma Ghandi, have been unacknowledged. And when the first Literature Prize was awarded to Sully Proudhomme, Sweden's foremost author, August Strindberg, who never received the prize, and many other prominent personalities wrote a letter of apology to Tolstoy.

The stipulation about conferring the greatest benefit on mankind in the preceding year has probably been taken into account more for the Peace Prize than the other awards, where it is common to look back over a candidate's career or recognize the person who originally made later developments possible.

http://stanleybloom.weebly.com

Digital DIY

In this digital age, DIY has expanded far beyond doing household repairs or knocking together a garden shed of varying degrees of permanence and stability. Now ordinary mortals can concoct their own website. Without writing a line of code. Who would have thought it not so very long ago?

Not me at any rate. A simple blog maybe, but a site? “You must have one,” they said, the so-called pundits, as though it were as vital as our daily bread (which has turned out not to be so vital, by the way, so I'll amend that to as vital as the air we breathe – provided it isn't polluted). “If you write, you don't exist without one. It's as simple as that!”

OK. So now I have got myself deeply immersed in the process, for if it is to be done, then I've got to be the one to do it. But thumbing through books on web design, redesign and heaven knows what else has taught me next to nothing. No, the little I've learnt has come from doing, getting my hands dirty, my feet wet.

Thus if like me you have been diagnosed as suffering from severe site deficiency syndrome, I suggest you plunge in at the deep digital end and get designing. Then redesigning, which I anticipate will be a never-ending occupation in my case. So if you have any comments or suggestions about my feeble efforts, do let me know.

The URL is http://stanleybloom.weebly.com

The Sorcerer Of Stockholm

Mention the word 'sorcerer' and you might conjurer up a vision of say Merlin, adviser-in-chief at the legendary court of King Arthur and a master weaver of spells who could foretell the future. According to various, if varying, versions of the tale.

In Roman times, being seen as a sorcerer, far from elevating you to the status of a Merlin was likely to be more than you life was worth, a drastic way of dealing with dissidents. The accusation was often made against women practicing what today we might call 'alternative medicine', for healing was the prerogative of male priests in the temple.

Neither did Christianity improve the lot of the supposed magician or sorcerer. Such unfortunates were deemed to be in league with the devil and to perform all manner of unmentionable acts. This led to the prolonged and shameful period of the witch-hunt, with women again the prime victims.

My Sorcerer, with his passion for antiquarian books and the opposite sex, has not much in common with these predecessors. Perhaps just a little with Merlin, who also had an eye for the ladies. This led to his downfall as he eventually took up with the wrong one, who having discovered the secret of his spells, promptly shut him up for ever more in an invisible tower, or hawthorn bush, or a cliff (in Brittany) or rock on the coast of Cornwall, depending whose version you want to accept. There are many to choose from.

My Sorcerer could produce comic verse, but whether he used incantations or magic spells that could be revealed to a designing damsel, I honestly cannot say. But, they would be of little use in predicting the future as he clearly never knows what is going to happen later the same day let alone what is in store for him. Or anyone else.

What I can say, however, is that he has arrived.

http://feedaread.com/books/The-Sorcerer-Of-Stockholm-9781785103469.aspx