Playboy, paragon of journalism

A reader sent in a quote from this month’s Playboy. They understand.

As politics go, we’re surprised so many readers expect us or any publication to provide “balance,” which reflects a belief in the fallacy that there are two equally valid sides to every story. You see this in the debate over global warming and evolution. Thousands of scientists stand on one side of the issue, recognizing that global warming is a problem and that evolution is firmly established, while only a few detractors stand on the other.

Move over, NY Times. Playboy has a more principled journalistic philosophy than you do (or at least, than some of your staff.)

I’d start reading the magazine, except that every time I’ve opened a copy, I find that I can’t quite get past the pictures. They’re too purty.

Noted without comment

Jodi Rudoren née Wilgoren, whose views on journalistic responsibility to accuracy and truth were encapsulated in this comment,

I don’t consider myself a creationist. I don’t have any interest in sharing my personal views on how the canyon was carved, mostly because I’ve spent almost no time pondering my personal views — it takes all my energy as a reporter and writer to understand and explain my subjects’ views fairly and thoroughly.

has been promoted at the NY Times.

Please, O Mighty Press, heed our prayer

Revere and Tara make fun of a silly guest commentary from a very silly man who thinks them evilutionists are cheating by using the term “mutation”—that changes in the virulence of a disease are examples of a “population shift,” which has nothing to do with evolution.

Just a note to any journalists or newspaper editors who might read this: the Panda’s Thumb has a useful list of scientists and other defenders of evolution who are willing—no, overjoyed—to vet these kinds of strange anti-scientific tirades. We’re also willing to help with any pro-science articles you might be moved to write. It’s kind of sad that this list is sitting there, and we rarely hear from any responsible journalists; I think I’ve had 3 calls in a year and a half. What’s the problem, is it just easier to take the press releases the Discovery Institute pushes at you, without bothering with that difficult job of actually questioning any of it?

Portrait of the blogger

The most amusing coverage of the Nature top science blogs article comes from The Technology Chronicles, which begins by calling scientists “sober, dispassionate, precise” and suggests that we’ve abandoned “Olympian impartiality” to compete with Cute Overload. I get the impression the author hasn’t ever met a real scientist. Nick will love being called a “budding Matt Drudge.”

We need more cute, huh? OK, I can do cute. I had to run my photo through a face transformer to do it, but here I am, rendered a bit more adorably than in real life.

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Now I just sit back and wait for the fans to roll in.

(Thanks to Lindsay, who took the original photo.)

Score: Clarke 1, Goldstein banned from the sport forevermore

Civilized Celts would send skillful bards to sing satires in great competitions. I applaud the idea of returning to such a literate tradition, but really…a skilled writer who knows something of meter and meaning vs. a clumsy, chattering hack who strings words together in lumpy, clattering arrhythmia? If this were a boxing match, it’d be like pitting Mohammed Ali in his prime against Steve Buscemi with a hangover. It’s Bambi sans charm vs. Godzilla with a keyboard. It’s the Philadelphia Philharmonic playing over a gurgling drainpipe. Who put together this embarrassing mismatch?

Summertime priorities

I say, “Fie on you, Superman Returns.” I’ll probably go see it if it shows up here in Morris, but otherwise, Jesus in spandex has little appeal to me.

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The only summer blockbuster I care about is the one with the pirates, and most importantly, the villains based on marine biology.

It takes a tortuously long time to get all the narrative plates spinning, but things fall into place once the real villain of the piece is unfurled. This is Davy Jones – of locker fame – and if that sounds like a cliché too far even for a camp pirate flick, Jones, played by Bill Nighy, and his crew are to this film what Depp was to its predecessor. They’re like a bad acid trip at the sealife centre. They sail in a living wreck and have bodies composed of aquatic lifeforms: one has the head of a hammerhead shark, another has cheeks like a pufferfish, and Jones himself has a giant lobster claw for a hand, and a wonderfully slimy octopus head with a prehensile beard of tentacles, through which he barks the fruitiest Scottish brogue this side of the Simpsons’ Groundskeeper Willie. It’s a triumph of special effects that this cephalopod creation is both unnervingly freakish, yet unmistakably Bill Nighy.

<swoon>

Music? Bah! Totally irrational!

But it’s science themed music, so that makes it a little bit OK. Easternblot.net links to music from This Week In Science, and in the comments, I discover the media empire of Doctor Steel. My kind of guy.

Oh, and since I haven’t done a Friday Random Ten in a while, here’s a science themed Friday Nonrandom Ten.

Evolution Rocks Overman
Jocko Homo Devo Greatest Hits
Dr. Worm They Might Be Giants
Do The Evolution Pearl Jam
Apeman The Kinks
Monkey To Man Elvis Costello
Monkey Gone To Heaven Frank Black
Primitive Science Kiril
Evolution is a Mystery Motorhead
What We Need More Of Is Science MC Hawking

The continuing assault on blogtopia

What is this, a few journalists have discovered blogs for the first time and have decided they just don’t like ’em? This fellow Zengerle seems to see them as a threat to the Republic, and now some guy named Quin Hillyer at the American Spectator weighs in, with some devastating complaints.

  • He is shocked at the funny names. “What the heck, for instance, is ‘Echidne of the Snakes‘ or ‘Nyarlathotep’s Miscellany‘?” Whoa. Burn. I’m sure glad I didn’t pick a weird name for my blog.
  • He doesn’t get Fafblog. He seems to think it’s about stilted writing, rather than some of the sharpest mockery of the Right around. Satire and humor are things that Serious Journalists do not use, I guess.
  • He doesn’t quite understand how links work. “Here’s a test: Visit any blog site that has a list of permalinks to other blogs, and pick the most seemingly off-topic link you can find. Within three blog links, you’re likely to find somebody advertising ‘Nude Live Babes!’ or ‘Celebrities In The Raw!’ or somesuch.” It’s true. I have discovered that you can get from my site to Michelle Malkin or Little Green Footballs in only two clicks. I am so ashamed.
  • There’s the horrible narcissism. “The blogs particularly lend themselves to a bizarre combination of attention deficit and what I’ll call the ‘Shouting-From-The-Rooftops Syndrome,’ a malady in which every utterance is deemed worthy of broadcast because, well, it’s mine, dammit, and I now have a forum on which to broadcast it.” Unlike, say, a print journalist for the American Spectator, who would never write an article expressing his gosh-wow reaction to discovering there is pr0n on the intarweb, and that you can get there by clicking on links. He would only write important stuff.
  • Worst of all, blogging tempts one into sin. “But what it doesn’t encourage is reflection, patience or, to stress again, discipline. And its wild informality, including the use and misuse of the written world, does not lend itself to careful persuasiveness.” That’s right, diversity and creativity are wicked…and are probably much too liberal for Mr Hillyer. People who write every day, day in and day out, for years can’t possibly have any discipline—writing because they love writing? Horrors! Where are the deadlines, the editors with whips, the challenge of a requirement to make Dick Cheney sound sensible and important? And how can you possibly find careful persuasive writers when the Nude Live Babes beckon?

Oh, well. Quin Hillyer (hey, wait a minute…what is he doing complaining about funny names?) really just cares about us. He even gives us parenting advice.

So, a memo to parents: Don’t let your children sit at their computers all day long. Even if they must be inside (outside exercise is often better), encourage them to read books and newspapers, to play board games, even to write notes to each other with pen and paper. That way they’ll learn to communicate rather than just to emote.

Good point. I should kick the kids outside and tell them to enjoy some fresh air and blue skies today. But my kids do read books. They don’t seem to care for the newspapers much, and the magazines they read are probably not the ones Hillyer would approve (my oldest does read The Economist, though…), but he’s wrong, otherwise. Our kids are adopting and modifying new media—is he aware of how much the youth are texting and IMing and MMORPGing and blogging and MySpacing and Facebooking together? I am, barely, but I’m not going to discourage kids from innovating because I’m a cranky old fart who thinks writing doesn’t count unless it’s done with the Palmer method on a Big Chief pad. And it’s gotta be serious, dammit. None of this high-falutin’ satire.