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Two green MacArthur recipients were named yesterday. (A MacArthur Fellowship, or “genius grant,” is $500,000 you can spend however you want, disbursed over the course of five years.) I keep wondering if there will be a news story about a MacArthur Fellow found floating in a pool in The Bellagio, but this never seems to happen, so they must have some kind of vetting process.

And this year, UC Berkeley bagged exactly none. That’s one down from last year, when a Cal scientist was awarded her cool half mil for doing what Berkeley does best.  (Saving the environment, dammit! Spare us the tree-sit jokes.) This past week, MacArthur genius grant recipients learned in a single

In the middle of book awards season (with the Booker, Nobel, and National Book Award all hitting in the next month or so), come the phone calls from the MacArthur Foundation, which lead to their recepients being called "geniuses" and cashing quarterly $25,000 checks for the next five years.

I've had a day filled with synchronicity. It feels like every day has an interesting nugget of meaning to be discerned if we are paying attention. But some days the puzzle pieces stand out more bodly than others!Yesterday I was thinking a lot about the country's financial meltdown and proposed government bailout.