Congratulations ...

... Rutgers-Camden professor Jacob Soll wins MacArthur grant | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/20/2011. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Soll says he became "almost like a geneticist, following the trail of this crazy DNA." Machiavelli turns out to be a founder of "modern political science, one in which you look rationally and critically at what political leaders do, and see what their real goals are and the means they use to achieve them." Machiavelli's dry-eyed, sometimes coldly rational, even cynical look at real people and real power was an early awakening of the modern.