My father’s a huge fan of the Weather Channel, something I’ve never really gotten into. I did watch a bunch of its hurricane coverage on Sunday, though, trying to figure out how my travel was going to be affected. Thus, I got to see a really fabulous exchange as the studio anchor tossed to a […]
Category: Journalism
It’s Not Just Science Journalism
One of the tabs I opened last week and didn’t have time to get to was this Clastic Detritus post about what it takes to get science stories in the media, which is (quoting Michael Lemonick): I get it that a stories involving science need a little something extra to make it in a magazine […]
A Few Words from Our Senior Middle East Correspondent
I’ve been sticking to my “no Internet before writing something” quota fairly well the last several days, with a couple of exceptions: 1) writing or no writing, I read a bunch of RSS feeds on my phone when I’m putting SteelyKid to bed at night, and 2) I keep following events in the Middle East […]
Sports Reported Like Science
the Wall Street Journal, of all places, has a profile of college basketball analyst Bill Raftery and how he prepares to call games. This would be nothing more than Links Dump material, save for the fact that bits of it appear to have been written for the benefit of visiting aliens who have never seen […]
Person of the Year, 2010
I’m very pleased to announce that the Uncertain Principles Person of the Year for 2010 is… SteelyKid: Why do I say this? Well… First, as lots of people will tell you, we’re all citizen journalists now. Which means that I’m every bit as entitled to declare a person of the year as Time magazine is. […]
Science Is Not Irreducibly Complex
The poor coverage of science in the media is an evergreen topic in blogdom, to the point where I’ve mostly stopped clicking on links to those sorts of pieces. This ScienceProgress post about newsroom culture bugged me, though, and it took me a while to figure out the problem. The author worked as a reporter […]
Precision Measurement Hits Cable
I didn’t see it live, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can see Tom O’Brian of NIST talking about measurement on the Rachel Maddow show last night: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Tom used to have an office not far from the lab I worked […]
Theoretical Particle Physics Is Always in Crisis
Dennis Overbye is a terrific writer, but I have to say, I hate the way that he falls into the lazy shorthand of using “physics” to mean “theoretical particle physics” in this article about a recent conference built around debates about the state of particle physics. He’s got lots of great quotes from Lisa Randall […]
Tiger Woods Can’t Win
I mostly try to avoid stupid celebrity gossip stories, but the last two weeks, it’s been impossible to escape the sordid Tiger Woods thing. I still don’t care about his personal life, but there’s one thing that keeps coming up in the media coverage that’s annoying me even beyond the stupidity of the whole business. […]
Sportz Is Hurting America
Over at the Mid-Majority, Kyle Whelliston (formerly of espn.com) has a great essay on the “Sportz” phenomenon: Sports are great. Actual participation is awesome, but watching other people do sports can still be pretty good too. These days, people can watch sports anytime, anywhere and in whatever state of undress they choose. These are truly […]