Humor New rules for science journalism 26 Nov 2010 From Zack Weiner’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Click the red button too. Continue Reading
Epistemology The view from nowhere and objectivity in the media [revised] 14 Nov 2010 Okay, after a solid bout of teaching, I can return to this piece. Rosen has attacked my interpretation, and rightly so. I ascribed to him views he did not hold. But, as I say elsewhere, this blog is for ill-formed thoughts that happen to pass through my forebrain. The particular… Continue Reading
Journalism How scientific journalism is, and should be done 7 Oct 2010 I wrote in my last links page, “Martin Robbins at the Guardian blog site spoofed science journalism with a “meta” entry. Here, he explains why and what to draw from it.” A scientist friend asked me my opinion. Never one to hold back, and as readers know, I have a… Continue Reading
Censorship Do not pity progessives 17 Sep 2010 From an article at Truthdig entitled “Do not pity the Democrats” by Chris Hedges, this opening paragraph: There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be… Continue Reading
Book A book review: Merchants of Doubt 30 Aug 201024 Nov 2022 This guest review is courtesy of Richard Harter, whose own website is here. Continue Reading
Humor A quote that should be true 13 Aug 2010 … even if it probably isn’t At a television news station, one of the employees put up a sign in the elevator: “The ‘7’ button is broken. Please press ‘4’ and ‘3’.” Then he stood back and watched the behavior of those people who are supposed to tell us what… Continue Reading
Australian stuff Pundit parody 4 Aug 2010 Australia doesn’t have lunatics of the calibre of the white supremacist Glenn Beck, at least, not on the media, but we have sufficient punditry to fuel a small nation all right. Idiots like Alan Jones, who incited a racial riot, and the entire news teams of the commercial TV stations…. Continue Reading
Administrative #SBFail 21 Jul 2010 The title is the Twitter hashtag for the ongoing implosion at Scienceblogs. Now several more have left the building, PZ is on strike (and so Twittering up a storm), others are thinking about it, and people are making snide satires at rival networks. My friend Mike Dunford has left, which… Continue Reading
Academe Herding cats, ethically 20 Jul 2010 There is a famous ad on Youtube in which cat wranglers herd cats to a final destination (for slaughtering? really?) as a metaphor for providing IT services. What is underpinning that humor is that domestic cats are not, typically, herd animals. They do not get along in large groups, although… Continue Reading
Education Science Communication and the Business Model 22 Mar 2009 There are a lot of folk who think they have a handle on how to communicate science to the general public, and a lot of folk, mostly scientists, who think nobody else does. But I was reading Carl Zimmer’s twittering today, about Rebecca Skoot getting a column gig for a… Continue Reading