Two new MacArthur grants in the L.A. area

Installation artist Jorge Pardo, who is a graduate of Art Center, and Caltech biophysicist John Dabiri, who studies the theoretical engineering behind jellyfish propulsion, have been named 2010 MacArthur Foundation fellows. Other California winners hail from the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy in Goleta, Stanford's School of Medicine, the UC Davis English department, the UC San Diego communication department, UC Berkeley's Center for Equitable Growth, and Berkeley's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Read 'em and weep. David Simon, the former journalist who created "The Wire," also picks up one of the....wait for it....genius grants.