Four days ago...
Tracker: January 2012
Four days ago we received notice that the Washington Post's Brian Vastag had a melancholy, powerful story on the anniversary of the Apollo capsule fire. It struck 45 years ago during a routine test on the launch pad and with no blast off yet on the schedule. I finally got around to reading his look-back at what the day was like, as recounted by the former wire service reporter who was NASA press officer on duty.
It is a fine, tailored vignette and fitting tribute to the times, to the...
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For awhile now the news of pythons and other huge constrictors breeding in the swamps of southern Florida could be put in the brain's slot for drolly amusing scenes from horror movies. Mankind's carelessness and hubris, creepy creatures, and brave rangers and police...
Perhaps the story most interesting, yet...
Perhaps the story most interesting, yet puzzling from a journalistic point of view, in the Science Times today is, on the front page and below the fold, Canadian freelancer Alanna Mitchell's catch-up on news about prehistoric Homo sapien couplings with other Homo species - Neanderthal mainly, Denisovan too for sure, and maybe even the Hobbits of Flores. After ten paragraphs I was still sighing to myself that...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A few stories from Chile today: the first is about extremely fast decision making in elite athletes. The article is extensive and very well written, but it is presented to the readers as if scientists were analyzing Lionel Messi's brain (the Barça world's best soccer player...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A few stories from Chile today: the first is about extremely fast decision making in elite athletes. The article is extensive and very well written, but it is presented to the readers as if scientists were analyzing Lionel Messi's brain (the Barça world's best soccer player). They are not. It seems that researchers cited Messi as an example, and the reporter created a whole story about his "unique" capabilities. The second story is about software that analyzes climate, economic factors, darkness of streets, previous delinquency and many other elements to predict crimes in specific areas and moments.
We also reflect on a story suggesting that Chile needs to support research on lithium batteries to take full advantage of its huge resources. The point is that Chile may get lots of money as one of the world's biggest exporters of lithium, butit can get much more if it built the batteries itself. But will take investment in...
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A couple of stories got to this tracker over the weekend:
1) The Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed page on...
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What a terrific story. New Scientist's Anil Ananthaswamy throws his vision into full-fisheye, wide-angle mode to put human use of energy into long term future-history context. Do that, he writes, and it starts to...
At the Philadelphia Inquirer the...
At the Philadelphia Inquirer the clever Faye Flam went into full deconstruction mode on Monday, quarreling with creationists' glee over their declaration that big shot scientists just stumbled across the creator. She did so in her column, Planet of the Apes, which revolves around evolution issues and, one has to say, cosmic evolution surely can be squeezed in among them.
The news she parses is that a big meeting in the UK among cosmologists led to discussion of Stephen Hawking, whose 70th birthday was the meeting's cause even though he was too ill to attend, and...
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The last week has seen intense coverage from Florida of the two main remaining contenders sparring over how they would revive and invigorate NASA. Last night I watched the latest debate, in which Newt Gingrich repeated his intention to use prizes as one way to get private industry to pour big dollars into entrepreneurial efforts. He implied that a colony on the moon within...
Nice piece here of enterprise writing about the Russian rush to make money in the Arctic Ocean. (alliteration is wit almost as cheap as puns. Almost but not quite. I try to draw the line at puns.) Reuters's Albina Kovalyova...
From Bangkok comes what the AP...
From Bangkok comes what the AP says is an exclusive story, and is definitely a good example of how to use a dramatic development to illuminate a larger, chronic issue. The development, writes reporter Thanyarat Doksone, is that an official of Thailand's wildlife agency reports that poachers are not only killing Asian elephants for their tusks, but their meat, giblets, sweetmeats, and other edible parts. The issue is the near-global concern that growing, hungry human populations may eat many endangered species out of existence....
Y' see...
Y' see bloke, here's a way by which one might pass himself off as a true son of England. Not only study up on yousel's accent, East Midland will serve, but you best toss in mention o'the occasional damp squib. Well! That sentence is all made-up English in rhythm and I don't mean the Queen's English or wots you hear on the Beeb. So no need to tell me I'm a pathetic linguist, as that's sort of the point. This is entirely a syntactical lark unhinged from reality, excluding the damp squib, wot is the real deal. This Britishism means something that was heralded in some quarters as great and impactful but in the event fell way short, sort of like the big solar storm that swept the...
At IPS a general news...
At IPS a general news service that includes a good deal on climate change, (*Correction 1: earlier post erred in saying it runs mainly climate news,and there was an even bigger error as noted below) Canadian crusading journalist Stephen Leahy reports a surprise, if it's true. But one sees in the story an element of bait and switch. It's not enough to refute the main point, which could well be perfectly valid. But the brush is broad.
Compare the lede, "The only green in biodiesel fuel is the money producers make from it, new research has revealed," with the followup: "Biodiesel from...
A little announcement at...
A little announcement at the National Arboretum in DC, about a new version of the handy climate zone maps that the USDA and its Agricultural Research Service publishes to help home gardeners and others know whether figs, peonies, or passion flower vines will do well in the yard, included a delightful round of fast-talking. That is, if the AP's...
Lately one often...
Lately one often encounters discussion of US research supremacy in context with ferment in a China that, after becoming the foremost, high-tech workshop for the world, is driving hard to seize prominence in innovative basic and applied research too and good for it. We need the competition.
This is a meandering post that will wind up with a minor point, thud. And it doesn't have to do as much with international science rankings or even science journalism as with one of the latter's prominent feed stocks: press releases. Bear with me, for there's a journalism observation too.
Onward. Awareness that China's rise in the world of high-level, original scientific research is a current...
Tons of ink the last few days as a big blob of sun stuff...
Tons of ink the last few days as a big blob of sun stuff, belched into a space from a spectacular solar eruption and flare, a coronal mass ejection of high ranking, came at Earth. Would it bollix communicaiton satellites, induce overloads in transmission lines, make hearing aid batteries explode (ok I made that up), or what?
Nothing much. Here are a few yarns filed after it went on its way toward the heliopause and points interstellar.
- AP - Karl Ritter, Seth Borenstein: Solar storm sparks dazzling northern lights ; With very impressed quotes from a cruise ship's...
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