confluence, you've been awfully negative about the fellowship and Peter Thiel thus far. However, you should be careful to not conflate the lack of readily available data on the fellows with lack of progress on their end. The fact that there isn't much press is a (very) rough indicator that the fellows are spending time working with their heads-down rather than attention-whoring.

Anyways, I'll do some homework for you and dig up some concrete cases of what the fellows have done:
- Andrew Hsu raised $1.5M as a solo founder for Airy Labs from Google Ventures and Foundation Capital (http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2011/08/04/names-...)
- Ben Yu has built a transdermal caffeine company (http://sprayableenergy.com/), which he holds provisional patents for (http://benyu.org/thiel-fellowship-closing-ceremony-speech)
- Clay Allsopp is building Propeller (http://usepropeller.com/), a drag-and-drop native iOS app builder. He has also authored a RubyMotion book (http://pragprog.com/book/carubym/rubymotion).
- Connor Zwick is building YC-backed Coco Controller (http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/the-yc-backed-coco-controll...) to augment iOS and Android gaming. He also has a Flashcards app with 1M+ downloads (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flashcards+/id408490162?mt=8).
- Darren Zhu is working on a synthetic biology company and has gotten a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/06/thiel-fellows-are-making-th...).
- Dale J Stephens has published a book, Hacking Your Education (http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Your-Education-Lectures-Thousa...) through Perigee Books, and has launched the UnCollege movement (http://www.uncollege.org/)
- Daniel Friedman is building personalized online education startup Thinkful, which has raised $1M (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/peter-thie...).
- Eden Full is building the SunSaluter (http://www.sunsaluter.com/) through her social venture Roseicollis Technologies, which has won the Westly Prize, the Mashable-UN Foundation Startups for Social Good Challenge, second prize at the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, and the grand prize at the Staples-Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (http://www.linkedin.com/in/edenfull).
- James Proud sold his company GigLocator for undisclosed 6-figure sum (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/06/20/skip-school-s...)
- Laura Deming has her own fund (http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mkg45jfej/laura-deming-18-2/) and has been working working closely with biotech legend Corey Goodman to fund anti-aging therapies. She also spoke at TEDMED 2013 (http://www.tedmed.com/speakers/show?id=46921)
- Nick Cammarata "started a company that was recently acquired" (http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/24/examining-the-thiel-fellows...).
- Paul Gu is working with Upstart, which raised $5.9M as a kickstarter for people (http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/22/upstart-grabs-5-9-million-t...)
- Ritik Malhotra is working on YC-backed Streem, a Dropbox for Video (https://angel.co/streem)
- Sujay Tyle is working at Developer Auction (http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/21/developerauction-sujay-tyle...), which has raised $2.7M (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/03/14/developera...)
- Taylor Wilson is building small nuclear fission reactors (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HL1BEC024g)
- Tom Currier built out a robotic solar panel tracking company (http://www.qbotix.com/) that has raised $7.5M total (http://www.qbotix.com/pressseptember4/) and got a couple patents for it (http://www.google.com/patents/WO2011150373A1, http://www.google.com/patents/WO2012009470A1)
- Yoonseo Kang has been working on Open Source Ecology and Open Tech Forever (http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/User:Yoonseo_Kang). You can check out some of the stuff he's built here: http://vimeo.com/user9565582

The fellows who haven't been explicitly mentioned here aren't necessarily dormant; they simply have not bothered to garner any press.

Please tread a little more carefully next time you label something as being "little different from child beauty pageants and dog shows" -- or at the very least, do your homework so a "college dropout" doesn't have to do it for you.