NYTimes Science Times and more: China’s solar rush; an ancient living mystery of the deep Atlantic; Guilt’s power; A new kind of collective health journal; and a good book ….
The Tracker is wracking his brain and can’t quite recall where or why it was, but I’ve seen that image of transfixingly regular holes in the sea floor that accompanies the lede piece in today’s Science Times. Or a pic very much like it anyway. William J. Broad tells of a near-obsessive hunt by marine biologists for a living Paleodictyon nodosum. Included in the tale is the kind of heroic and complex hardware Broad’s writing tends to highlight. A few posts down, I wrote this morning of the challenge in writing of scientific mysteries that are in half-solved limbo (it’s the one about honey bees). The cleanest news stories to write are those in which the puzzles are huge and unplumbed, or suddenly have convincing answers. Broad’s tale is of the first sort. It concerns overwhelming hunger to answer a riddle. I know the essence of this is not new. But these details and angles on the researchers’ personal characteristics are.
Before finishing the SciTimes roundup, one has to recognize the good front page reporting by Keith Brasher from Wuxi, China, on the galloping photovoltaic industry in that country. The Times has provided readers with illuminating coverage prevously of wind power in China; Now we get the sun power. Thinking about China may evoke a mood here akin to what swept Europe a century ago on witnessing the habit in the then-rambunctious US of doing things BIG.
Back to Sci Times, and straight to p. 2 where Kenneth Chang writes, darned near, the advance obituary for NASA’s manned space program as we’ve known it. His first quote predicts the effort is about to go in the ditch. A feared new reality seems to be taking shape, he writes: “…the American human spaceflight program might not accomplish anything new anytime soon.” Whoof, that’s a punch in the belly for old time NASA fans. The upcoming Augustine Panel’s report to NASA may have its advance summation right there. This ought to have been parked on p. A1, or led Week in Review, or been somewhere else where plenty of eyeballs belonging to the science-averse would have seen it. Chang has been writing about this general topic, covering breaking events, for awhile now. This one shows he knows how to blow the cobwebs of daily news writing out of his mind and focus on the essential.
Other Science Times Stories:
- John Tierney: Guilt and Atonement on the Path to Adulthood ; Who knew that guilt comes in distinct flavors called Puritan, Catholic, and Jewish, among others? Tierney thinks so. This is more meditation on morals and ethical compasses than an account of research.
- Sarah Arnquist: Research Trove: Patients’ Online Data. What if all those inchoate but useful online discussion groups among patients with rare or baffling disease could be distilled and put in one place? And more currency here for a new term: crowd-sourcing of research.
- Abigail Zuger M.D.: Books / When a Doctor Is More, and Less, Than a Healer ; Looks like Amazon and other book sellers better brace for a surge in sales for the novel “Right of Thirst.” When a writer, in a reviewer’s opinion, composes in a manner “so unusual, the touch so light and sure, you could have walked along with him forever…” a lot of people are going to want to look for themselves.
As usual, lots more. Whole Section ;
-CP
