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Comment by holdenc | Hacker News Reader

A few unrelated thoughts: I've seen some of the brightest people get shipped back to their home country after their "practical training" (the year allowed for work after a foreigner's college graduation). This is the worst type of protectionism, bordering on xenophobia. Our country was built by great immigrants, period.

Secondly, most emerging economies emphasize math and sciences much more than America. If the awards were for art and literature we'd likely see more diversity here.

And lastly, I've known a few foreign science prodigies who get PhDs from tops schools only to end up on the model validation team at Goldman Sachs, or some job that pays well but is provincial and soul crushing.

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> A few unrelated thoughts: I've seen some of the brightest people get shipped back to their home country after their "practical training" (the year allowed for work after a foreigner's college graduation).

Much of America sees "import more low skilled workers" as a bad idea.

This is relevant because the tech industry and most other folks interested in importing more brains has joined forces with the folks who want to import low skilled workers.

Since most of america is willing to import brains, the wisdom of this pairing from the "import brains" side is unclear.

Don't worry we will make sure they stay on the bottom rung of the ladder - safely managed by guys called Chester from Yale or Havard who have never seen a public school.

After all these are just geeks.

The most important piece of literature in the past half century was written by Salman Rushdie, an indian.

The spelling bee champions nowadays tend to be indian.

Once hard working societies like india/china catch on that there's money in arts, I'd bet that to be overtaken as well.

"And lastly, I've known a few foreign science prodigies who get PhDs from tops schools only to end up on the model validation team at Goldman Sachs" I'd bet wall street gets more top notch work done than academia or productive industry. If only they'd get incentives worked out like wall street has, you might get a new industrial revolution going.

I always thought there is a serious problem with our country when the best and brightest go to work in the financial sector.

I don't. There is massive misallocation of capital still going on by government and unsophisticated businessman (such as your local businesses or small venture capital) that wall street could fix.

The current problem on wall street is that there is too much money chasing too few deals (government regulation/ownership prevent many asset classes from being tradeable) and bailouts (which defeat the incentives in capitalism - incentive to not fail). Both problems are caused by government.

"The most important piece of literature in the past half century was written by Salman Rushdie, an indian."

Really? I'd put Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago way ahead of anything else I've read from the past half-century for importance. Or do you not consider that literature because it's nonfiction?

Either way, what was so important about the Satanic Verses (or do you mean a different book by Rushdie?) besides the fact that it pissed off some religious dictator?

Midnight Children

edit: won the "booker of booker" prize (the best book out of all the booker prize winners over the past 40 years)

I've only even heard of one of the Booker winners (Life of Pi.) Maybe I'm just that uncultured. Then again, maybe the literary establishment is just that insular.

Midnight's Children is like The Lord of the Rings for people who like modern literature. It's no more silly or obscure than LOTR.

The postmodernists call it "post-colonial magical realism", because they can't admit that it's just fantasy written by a good author (who writes very pretty prose) who likes character development more than sword-fights.

Think of "the literary establishment" as Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. Don't let their posturing put you off.

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