Power Rankings: Nobel Prize Edition!

Although the dearth of new films and books has made Power Rankings something of a challenge this week, Creative Differences has turned misfortune into opportunity by deciding to recognize the 2007 Nobel Laureates in a very special Power Rankings. That's right, today we will honor the men and women who have worked tirelessly to better humankind by glibly mocking one-sentence summaries of their work.

1. Gerhard Ertl, Chemistry
Prize awarded "for opening up the hidden world of surface chemistry to investigation."

• Look, fair enough, by why didn't Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird win for opening up the secret world of plants? God, the Nobel Foundation is so political. And anthropocentric.

2. Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, Physics
Prize awarded "for discovering the effect underlying data storage on most hard disks."

• According to the Nobel Foundation's "Information for the Public," Fert and Grünberg invented something called "Giant Magnetoresistance." What it didn't explain is that Giant Magnetoresistance is also slated to be the super villain in Spider Man 4. I'm not sure what his power is, but it sounds kind of scary.

3. Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson, Economics
Prize awarded "for extending the range of tools for economic analysis."

• Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'm sure they earned the Nobel Prize in Economics. What I want to know is who won the Nobel Prize in Freakanomics.

4. Doris Lessing, Literature
Prize awarded for work which "extends from the realistic to the fabulous."

• What that means is that her work went from expounding profound social insights to describing intergalactic relations with Planet 8, a world far away from Earth. Whoever wrote that blurb should win the Nobel Prize for Euphemism.

5. Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Peace
Prize awarded "for informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change."

• Shouldn't this award also go to the makers of The Day After Tomorrow?

(Statue of Liberty? You mean climate change happened to our planet? Damn you! Damn you all to hell!)

6. Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies, Medicine
Prize awarded for "producing specific genetic alterations in mice."

• Yeah, genetic manipulation is all fun and games with mice, but remember what happened to the Galactic Republic when Senator Palpatine was given free reign to experiment with genetics?

(Not even Star Wars fans are aware that Stormtroopers are actually just an army of mutant mice. Why else do you think they never take off those silly masks?)