NYTimes Science Times, and other sections:
John Markoff’s expertise on the economics and wizard gadgetry of the world’s silicon valleys - displayed in the Business section for years - landed him top, front, and center in his new home with ScienceTimes today. It’s about Moore’s law and the geometric growth in the density of transistors and the equivalent. For years, decades, science and technology writers have reported worry that the fundamental laws of physics were about to call a halt, only to have inventive technologies keep the pace unflagged. Sooner or later, somebody will be right. Markoff writes it wisely – the gadget boys and girls are down to tricks and desperation, but there are glimmers of whole new ways to shrink a transistor or diode. And did you know that 2 million transistors can fit in the period on this page ..er, this screen? It includes a linked podcast, a sidebar on the first appearances of the word transistor in the NYTimes.
Another highlight on p. 1 is a disturbing if unsurprising – aside from a few dismaying specifics – Donald G. McNeil, Jr., report on the irrational, often cruel, and entirely frightened and tribal reactions people can have to illness - and their choices through history of whom to blame for epidemics. Jews took the blame, horrendously in many places, for the Black Plague on the Middle Ages, pigs and Chileans and then Argentines have been snubbed or slaughtered to hold off swine flu.
And if you’re looking for a good book, in Scientist at Work the Time’s Cornelia Dean interviews a geologist-author who, she writes convincingly, has produced a book of gripping, intimate history in Louisiana, focussed on a long-ago natural disaster whose lessons are not yet learned, even after Katrina.
Other notable headlines:
- Elizabeth Svoboda: In Tonsils, a Problem the Size of a Pea ; Tracker had to check the date to be sure this isn’t an April Fool’s story. Tonsil stones? And they stink.
- Natalie Angier: Skipping Spouse to Spouse Isn’t Just a Man’s Game ; And here’s a precious Angierism: “….regardless of wifetime total.” Her brain’s language cortex must be full of free-association gears, like hamster wheels, spinning all the time. The illus up there is with this.
- Carl Zimmer – First Trace of Color Found in Fossil Bird Feathers ; Several outlets covered this report in Biology Letters, ‘wish I had time for a full track on them. Odd that Zimmer and some others don’t point out the the Messel fossil pits where these once-iridescent feathers lay is also where the overhyped but beautiful primate fossil Ida was found.
- Tara Parker-Pope: A New Heart, Tangled in Red Tape ; A tale of hope and tragedy, and of medical rationing alreadyand inevitably here, with or without Obamacare.
As usual, lots more in whole section.
BUT WAIT – There is still more! Wotta newspaper. In other sections today:
- P. 1 – Kirk Johnson: Montana Court to Decide Claim of Right to Doctor’s Aid in Dying ;
- P. 1 – Benedict Carey: For Longtime Captive, a Complex Road Home ;
- Opinion: guest science policy piece by Lawrence Krauss: A One Way Ticket to Mars ;
- Business – Claire Cain Miller: Venture Firm’s ‘Green’ Funds Top $1 Billion ; For those who want to know: who is Vinod Khosla, Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and why is he doing what he is doing?
- P. A17 – William Yardley: With No Order From Judge, Wolf Season Is Set to Begin ; filed from Boise, Idaho.
-CP
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