A non-farce award should base its judgment on results, not effort. A peace activist who spends his entire career digging and refilling a hole, for example, should not be anywhere near the Peace Prize shortlist. Despite the little time he spent, Petrov did more for world peace than many others who have been working longer -- not that his decision was easy, anyway.
A non-farce award should base its judgment on results, not effort.
BTW, that appears to be how the Nobel Prize in Physics is achieved: for being shown to be right, with relatively little regard to how you came to be right.
A reminder for everyone: on this day in 1983, Stanislav Petrov saved the world.
It occurs to me this time around that there's an interesting relationship here - 9/26 is forgotten, while 9/11 is remembered. Do something charitable, and not patriotic, sometime today.