something to read

[nibot]

"What's New" is a weekly column by Prof. Bob Park of the University of Maryland and the American Physical Society, of, well, what's new in science, with a particular bent towards science policy. It comes out every friday and is usually amusing and informative. You can subscribe and get it in your mailbox every friday afternoon.

Comments

[calbruin.livejournal.com]

Quoting from Friday, April 30, 2004

1. NASA SCIENCE: IS THE SPACE AGENCY BECOMING JUST A THEME PARK?
For a million years our species was confronted with a world we could not hope to understand. Now, almost within the span of a single human lifetime, the book of nature has been thrown open. We aspire to solve the great mysteries: dark matter, dark energy, why there is mass, the big bang, and the origin of life. We long to know. Instead, according to the New York Times, experiments to unravel these great mysteries have been assigned low priority, along with anything that has to do with global warming (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/science/space/27NASA.html). This will allow NASA to focus its resources on human exploration, pandering to a public weaned on Star Trek. NASA’s priorities will delay real exploration by decades, vastly increase costs, and put lives at risk. You might suppose NASA would hold off until the President’s Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond makes its report in June (WN 16 Apr 04). The Moon/Mars Commission, was apparently mere window dressing. The only appeal open to scientists is to members of Congress.

That's it? Just these pitful attempts at pithy commentary? I just read the first item on the list and I am not interested because:
(a) The paragraph, that's all there was -- (if there is more, have at least one full length article, not mere abstracts, otherwise one has in-sufficient material to gauge substance of this writer) -- I wanted more but only got an incomplete (athematic = without a thesis statement) random assemblage of words which amounted nothing more than
(b) ramblings of some dis-enchanted, or arrogant no name scientist. I recall last Friday night, there was some one who joined us for hosting Professor Paolo Mancosu (http://www.livejournal.com/users/calbruin/38708.html) who rambled on about how NASA is not doing things right and wrongly ignores his sage advice on how things should be done and also ignores his proposals.
(c) With the given title, one may expect more commentary on NASA "pandering to a public weaned on Star Trek". Similar to Reason A, the piece makes no argument either to support or to explain or to justify the claim made by the title
and
(d) Reliance on a single news source especially the New York Times as fuel for discussion and (supportive) scientific evidence demonstrates poor analysis and moreover illustrates how irrelevant (I wanted to write ignorant but that may be a bit harsh albeit) of using genuine science resources e.g. Nature as any half-way respectable, meaningful scientist would do.

If you read this for humour, then I very can understand but why waste your time, The Onion offers better science humour than this random ramblings. I hate to read what this guy had to say about the recent discovery of the new elements.