mymarkup.net

Biografin över J. Robert Oppenheimer, "American Prometehus", är en sån där bok man funderat på att läsa (finns nu i paperback). Den har idag tilldelats Pulitzer-priset för bästa biografi från förra året. En lite relaterad bok som verkar intressant är "The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite" av Ann Finkbeiner (recension i NYT) som handlar om den lite hemlighetsfulla organisationen Jason, där forskare sedan 1950-talet rådgivit den amerikanska regeringen, ibland med katastrofala resultat:

Of the 100 or so scientists who have served on Jason, Finkbeiner has interviewed 36. A few spoke anonymously, and others refused to talk at all. That reticence is not surprising, given that as much as three-quarters of Jason's work has consisted of classified military projects, some of them morally questionable. Like Errol Morris's film 'The Fog of War,' in which Robert McNamara painfully revisits Vietnam, Finkbeiner's book shows how even the smartest people with the noblest intentions can end up committing shameful acts.

Update: ...och så läser man vidare lite om Pulitzer-priset och konstaterar att New Orleans-tidningen The Times-Picayune, som fick två journalistiska priser för sin bevakning under Katrina-katastrofen, till viss del får det baserat på sin nätjournalistik, och det lär vara första gången man har accepterat bidrag som ursprungligen publicerats online. Hos NOLA.com läser man:

This year for the first time, the Pulitzer Prize board allowed a newspaper to submit material that appeared originally in online form, in addition to printed stories, as a part of their entries.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, The Times-Picayune’s continuously updated online blog, as well as its online editions of the paper posted each night on its affiliated Web site, NOLA.com, became the source of information for more than a million area residents who had evacuated, and for much of the world.

Visits, or “hits,” to Times-Picayune pages on NOLA.com, increased from an average of about 800,000 page views a day before Katrina to more than 30 million page hits a day in the days after the storm. Excerpts from those blogs, as well as stories from the online editions of the paper, made up a portion of both of the newspaper’s winning entries.