What’s wrong with the new format of “Science News”? First, let me say the content is still as good as before. It appears the editors of Science News are attempting to turn their brief, weekly news periodical into a thicker, glossy news magazine to compete with the likes of Discover and Scientific American. I don’t need another thick glossy magazine, with long articles to sit on my shelf, the selling point of Science News was always that it was timely and brief. I do understand their motivation. On the one hand, if one wants timely delivery of science news today, they turn to the Internet. They don’t wait for a printed version. So, expanding the online offering is good. They have only moved from weekly to bi-weekly, which is not much of a change since I don’t always sit down and consume Science News when it comes in the door. Yet, I do feel I could sit down and in just a few minutes extract everything I want from the brief, weekly format. This is no longer the case.

The other motivation may be that the editors are seeking to “modernize” the magazine. With the technology today, it is hard not to want glossy two-page spreads, pull-out Nanotube centerfolds and extravagant fonts and layouts. Still, nobody subscribes to Science News because it is pretty. We subscribe because it is authoritative, timely and brief. If I want in-depth, I will read Scientific American or Nature, or one of the many similar magazines that already exist out there. You’ve changed your charter, you no longer deliver what your customers want. I wonder how many customers will drop your periodical in favor of actual brief, timely science news on free Internet sites?

Of course, a larger magazine means expanding your advertising. You can’t have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat! So, what do I find in the first expanded, bi-weekly issue? A two-page self-promotion for “Null Physics”. What next? Maybe you include a copy of “What the Bleep Do We Know?” with new subscriptions? In the process to expand and look like the “other boys”, Science News has caught the big boy disease - prostituting your magazine pages for advertising dollars and polluting your pages with pseudoscientific propaganda that is most assuredly NOT peer-reviewed and authoritative. What next? Sexual enhancement ads? No, wait, that’s on the inside back cover. Now every time I close the magazine, a picture of Leon Lederman is going to have his face buried in some nightgown-clad woman’s breasts. Nice.

• Weather: Wet

• Allergies: moderate
• Mood: fatigued
• Weather: raining

It’s raining out. Not much more than sprinkles and the occasional thunder clap, but that’s enough for me. I really feel like falling asleep to the sound of rain. It’s been a long day, and I’m ready to turn in.

The day started out early, with allergy medicine and letting the dogs out a little after 7 am. I messed around on the computer (found some hacked files that I must have missed before), and then it was 10:00. I mowed, and I planted some flowers. It was cool and overcast all day. I made a trip to the pool store, where I picked up a new vacuum head and pole for cleaning the pool. They had hot dogs, so that was my lunch. I followed that up with a trip to the hardware store. I went in needing a cultivator and came out with a cultivator, some cleaning solution for the sprayer, and a new Stihl gas-powered trimmer.

I am looking through Scientific American and a new magazine I just subscribed to, Science Illustrated (with lovely illustrations, I have to say), and what do I continue to come across? These damn 2-page ads that some guy with a BSEE and way too much money on his hands has plastered across most popular scientific magazines for the past year to sell his new book. [Our Undiscovered Universe: Introducing Null Physics (no longer available on Amazon.com)] Terrence Witt has decided he will rewrite physics in a way that only an outsider (read: untrained) person can. He claims that science has been “stalled for 30 years” and he can answer all the questions of the Universe. He claims that science should be able to answer “why” the universe exists and “what” caused the Big Bang (except he claims there was no Big Bang).

It is annoying to see someone who has no real understanding of science trying to rewrite all of physics from the ground up using his own circular logic (read the JREF forums for some debunking of his “theories”). It is also annoying that someone has so much money, they want to spend it on flooding popular science magazines in the hope people will “believe” what he writes because they see ads in so many places. People might decide the book is peer-reviewed and legitimate just because the magazines allowed the advertising. Well, I think it is an inappropriate and desperate act for these magazines to accept his advertising dollars, when there are no mainstream physicists who think he has any worthwhile ideas, and most think he is just plain wrong. (I am sure he has a self-consistant argument for the case he presents, but the fact he has convinced himself he is right doesn’t mean he knows what he is talking about. He is using fallacious arguments to sell his book (read my write-up on Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit). He is an authority because he says so, but if you challenge him he claims only an outsider can bring paradigm change to “modern science”. As much as he would probably protest, he is coming from the same camp as Ben Stein. He is able to manipulate the facts and show correlations based on limited, select data and he confuses correlations with causation. Fortunately for him, if he has an explanation of what happened before the Big Bang, it is unlikely anyone will ever be able to prove him wrong, but that in itself is proof that what he is offering is a (flawed) philosophy and not science.

The bunnies are alright… to steal a phrase from The Who. No known fatalities, and from my inspection of their nest earlier today, they are getting pretty good sized. As long as mama is teaching them to sprint and evade dogs, they should make it to the next yard and beyond.

Down the bunny hole…

All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.

There is a storm coming. I can feel it in my bones. We’ve been warned for days, but have been oblivious and enjoyed the blue skies and 80 degree temperature. We have ignored the signs. It looks like a storm is coming from the northwest, like a wall. I will be in bed when it arrives, as for the bunnies, I cannot say. I will take a Vicodin and leave my window cracked, and enjoy the rain against the roof and glass and the wind as it makes the trees drag branches across the siding like fingernails on a chalk board. Bundle up and settle in for a stormy night!