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I'm a little late on this, but Mental Floss held a Tournament of Genius in the spirit of March Madness.

Some of the contestants in the round of 64 (and a few in the round of 32) were laughable - Matt Groening over Pablo Picasso? - but the Sweet Sixteen is uncompromising (seedings in parentheses).

DIVISION #1:

Albert Einstein (1)

vs. Jonas Salk (12)

Pythagoras (6)

vs. Plato (2)

DIVISION # 2:

Thomas Jefferson (1) vs. Marie Curie (5)

Michaelangelo (3) vs. Benjamin Franklin (2)

DIVISION #3:

Sir Isaac Newton (1) vs. Ludwig von Beethoven (4)

Louis Pasteur (3) vs. William Shakespeare (2)

DIVISION #4:

Leonardo da Vinci (1) vs. Galileo Galilei (4)

Rene Descartes (3) vs. Nicola Tesla (7)

Check out the full bracket, round-by-round match-ups, and the final match.

What a wonderful book idea over at Snarkmarket. They're exploring emergent fields of the kottke-termed Liberal Arts 2.0.

I'd like to get more into this later but here is a totally unorganized synopsis from the ongoing discussion of what LA2.0 is.

Per Tim at Snark, LA2.0 is:

Art
Design
Photography
Music
*
Languages
Literature
Philosophy
*
History
Politics
Economics
*
Mathematical Sciences
Natural Sciences
Biological Sciences
*
Food

Per Jason in the comments section:

Here's the list I came up with shortly after concocting the term for a talk I did in early 2007:

Graphic design, freakonomics, photography, programming, film, remixing, video games, food, advertising, internet life skills, journalism, fashion.

To be sure the concept must be explored more, but the idea is that young people need a new skill set these days.

There is a new home economics to learn - as they discuss on the aforementioned pages - and video games are no longer the exception (now they are the rule).

TO THE HORIZON!

Art and Science: two fields regarded by many as different, if not entirely divergent. Our hope is to prove they are brethren, that they are kindred spirits working hand in hand to explain this weird and wild world that we kick around in.

If Jessica Hagy indexed the two spheres of art and science, the intersection would probably be “fractals or Cygnus Nebula.” Wait, on second thought, she would come up with something wittier than that, but I think Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is a perfect example of organic overlap. The familiar image can stand alone as art. It can stand alone as science. But deeper than that is a bond between the two. It is an indescribable feeling of connectivity between empirical illumination and inherent splendor: a sumptuous gaze into divinity through rudimentary eyes.

Look closer. Da Vinci’s man exhibits the proportions that reveal, in his words, the cosmography of the microcosm. That means, more or less, a map of the heavens and the earth as found in men and women, alike. Quite an enchanting notion.