Dept of Never Mind
Joe Romm has a
Monthly Archives : January 2011
Cry Me a River
Media bashing is a popular sport of both the Left and Right. It always has been, but in the blog/twitter/200 cable channels age, journalism has become a proxy battleground for everyone with an ax to grind, as this 2008 NYT story explains: The blur of new media creates fresh opportunities for attack, counterattack, counter-counterattacks, odd…Continue Reading…
Doomsday Chronicles, pt. 4
Bryan Walsh at Time has a nice
Comment of the Day
Goes to this cautionary flashback: I love the New Yorker and over the years they have published many fine articles on science by bright and knowledgeable writers including Lehrer (e.g., John McPhee, Jonathon Schell, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Jeremy Bernstein, Atul Gawande, Malcom Gladwell). Despite this excellent record of science translation, it is useful to…Continue Reading…
Peer Review Takes Another Hit
But I view this recurring issue the same way I view revelations of juiced baseball players: Yeah, it happens, and it sullies the game, but not nearly enough to make me consider stop watching baseball. In other words, has the use of steroids fatally compromised the sport? No. So there’s two ways to look at…Continue Reading…
The Doomsday Chronicles, pt. 3
If you’re gonna be a doomer, this seems like the right attitude to take: I begin the year convinced that our civilisation will collapse soon but at the same time enjoying the continuous Mozart on Radio 3, abandoning alcohol for the month with enthusiasm, and committing myself to three runs and 70 000 steps a…Continue Reading…
Quote of the Day
On the passing of Gerry Rafferty, Stoat reminisces about that famous line from “Stuck in the Middle with You” and remarks: the same problems exist: remaining sane and balanced between we’re-all-going-to-die and there-is-no-problem. Many people will undoubtedly associate the song with a classically twisted Tarantino scene. I’m glad Stoat chose this great clip in memoriam.
The Problem With Localism
It’s “dangerously naive” and an “indulgent form of self-interest,” writes an engineering professor in this provocative essay. Oh, and also “seriously mistaken”: An insular community which does not trade regionally or internationally is at risk from the most basic threats, such as crop failure due to local extremes of weather. The evidence for this is…Continue Reading…
"Elaborate Fraud"
Yesterday, after the news broke of an extensive investigative report by Brian Deer, a British journalist, CNN’s Anderson Cooper took it from there and completed the evisceration of huckster Andrew Wakefield, whose infamous 1998 study supposedly linking autism to the MMR vaccine was retracted last year by the journal Lancet. Cooper doesn’t mince words, and…Continue Reading…
A Rare Climate Species
They don’t have much sway in the party of Limbaugh, but there is such a thing as gay Republicans, and a species known as Republicans for Environmental Protection. Cognitive dissonance aside, they’ve even been around for a while. But did you know there was also a rare breed of conservative climate scientists? There’s even a…Continue Reading…