Media

Calling Peter “Not Even Wrong” Woit, right this minute: In “Morgan Freeman Goes From God to Science” ( New York Times, August 26, 2011) Alex Pappademas writes what sounds like a parody of pop science TV – but takes it seriously: In the hands of a goofier host — and let’s face it, anyone other than Freeman would by definition be a goofier host — the series could have been “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” with string theory, or a bottomless can of mind-Pringles for freshman-dorm Castanedas. (Representative episode titles include “Does Time Really Exist?” and “Beyond the Darkness”; presumably, the producers are saving “Have You Ever Looked at Your Hand — I Mean, Really Looked at It?” and “No, Read More ›

A while back, I wrote a note on how a government can gain control of the Internet (by criminalizing the hyperlink). Here’s another way: By making new rules that discriminate against blogs, vs. other sources of news. That’ exactly what the Canadian province of Quebec proposes, according to Franklin Carter at the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee: In Quebec, Culture Minister Christine St-Pierre is proposing to create “a new model of regulation of Quebec media.” Public consultations will be held across Quebec this fall. She wishes to distinguish in law between “professional journalists” who are committed to “serving the public interest” and “amateur bloggers.” State-recognized professional journalists would enjoy unspecified “advantages or privileges” over other writers and Read More ›

Leaving ID theorists with a blank slate to deal with, instead of a horde of bawling trolls? In “Of Course: NYT Editor Suddenly Very Interested in Candidates’ Churches” (Townhall , August 25, 2011 ), Guy Benson notes, We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a “cult” and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not “overly religious.”) Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation Read More ›

Newsweek here.

Also: Rick Mcginnis reviews the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times (Landmark Report Jul 09, 2011), recounting,

Subtitled “A Year Inside The New York Times,” Andrew Rossi’s film begins at the paper’s printing plant, the camera following huge rolls of newsprint on their way to becoming the next morning’s edition of the Times. This is the physical incarnation of institutions like the New York Times, with their insistence on remaining once daily, pulp-and-ink, top heavy, capital intensive operations in a digital age without deadlines or time zones, where a billion-dollar enterprise with lovely new offices in midtown Manhattan can be scooped by a blog published from a laptop in a coffee shop.

Like here, for example. And countless other places.  Read More ›

A reader writes to offer a suggestion about how to communicate about stuff that really matters, so that people know why it matters, based on his experience as a flight school instructor:

Early in the training for a private pilot certificate we were required to introduce the student to stalls and their proper recovery. If I introduced the lesson by announcing that we were going to take a detailed look at the aerodynamics of stalls and an associated condition known as a spin, the response was always one of polite attention but with the eyes rolled back into the head.

However, Read More ›

In “’Belief’ in evolution? It may be the wrong word” (06/27/2011), Faye Flam, Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer, allows us to know that we really shouldn’t say we “believe in” evolution because, as Larry Krauss puts it,

“I have attempted, largely through spurring on from several colleagues . . . to never use the word belief in talks,” said Arizona State University physicist and writer Lawrence Krauss.

“One is asked: Does one believe in global warming, or evolution, and the temptation is to answer yes,” he said, “but it’s like saying you believe in gravity or general relativity.”

“Science is not like religion, in that it doesn’t merely tell a story . . . one that one can choose to believe or not.”

Ms. Flam typefies the legacy media in decline because she cannot Read More ›

At Creation-Evolution headlines, Dave Coppedge asks, “If This Is Evolution, What Is Trivia?” (June 24, 2011): New Scientist printed a dramatic headline, “Lab yeast make evolutionary leap to multicellularity.” A leap of the imagination, as it happens. This challenge to Darwinian evolution turned out to be a cinch, it went on to claim: “In just a few weeks single-celled yeast have evolved into a multicellular organism, complete with division of labour between cells,” reporter Bob Holmes announced. “This suggests that the evolutionary leap to multicellularity may be a surprisingly small hurdle.” Trouble is, other evolutionists aren’t buying it. For one thing, William Ratcliff and colleagues at the University of Minnesota “set out to evolve multicellularity” in yeast cells by centrifuging Read More ›

Few or no documentaries. Okay, that doesn’t matter. But this does: In unbylined “An Environmentalist’s Lament” (Breakthrough Journal, June 2011), we learn, once again, about the high costs of hype when it does matter:

Take last summer’s BP oil spill in Louisiana. Covering the spill was the Super Bowl of environmental journalism. You couldn’t have asked for a better disaster: the never-ending gusher, the oiled birds and tar balls, the callous foreign corporation and corrupt government agency. [ … ] I was in no position to go off chasing oil slicks — but also with a certain discomfort I couldn’t put my finger on until recently, when New Yorker staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian published an exhaustive investigation into the spill.

Read More ›

In “Why liberals fell for ‘Muslim lesbian blogger’ hoax” (OC Register, June 17, 2011), Mark Steyn tells a story that shows why current Big Media won’t likely recover from their current tailspin:

On Sunday, Amina Arraf, the young vivacious Syrian lesbian activist whose inspiring blog “A Gay Girl In Damascus” had captured hearts around the world, was revealed to be, in humdrum reality, one Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old college student from Georgia. The following day, Paula Brooks, the lesbian activist and founder of the website LezGetReal, was revealed to be one Bill Graber, a 58-year-old construction worker from Ohio. In their capacity as leading lesbians in the Sapphic blogosphere, “Miss Brooks” and “Miss Arraf” were colleagues. “Amina” had posted at LezGetReal before starting “A Gay Girl In Damascus.” As one lesbian to another, they got along swimmingly. The Washington Post reported:”Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian.”

It got so crazy that …

This problem will not get any better. There isn’t going to be a mainstream media that writes with any understanding whatever about the intelligent design controversy. The media that do that will either be new media or media emerging alive from the debacle. The only solution is, …

Read More ›

One of the most common objections to design thought is the idea that it is about the improper injection of the alien  supernatural into the world of science. (That is itself based on a strawman misrepresentation of design thought, as was addressed here a few days ago.)

However, there is an underlying root, a common distortion of the origins of modern science, which Nancy Pearcey rebutted in a  2005 sleeper article as headlined, that deserves a UD post of its own.

Let’s clip the article:

Read More ›

Well, they would, but … Once you’re thick in Science, you can question the paradigm. But if you want to get grants, if you want to be elected to high positions, if you want to get awards as a promoter of public education of Science, you can’t question the paradigm. ~  45.09 I interviewed dozens and dozens of scientists and, when they’re amongst each other or talking to a journalist who they trust, they’ll speak about ‘It’s incredibly complex’ or ‘Molecular Biology is in a crisis’, but, publicly, they can’t say that. ~  45.52 – from Expelled Witham is a veteran Washington area journalist and author.

Here’s an interesting reflection on the accelerating collapse of legacy mainstream media: A curious fact emerged from the frenzied search through U.S. politician Sarah Palin’s e-mails (which turned up nothing much), that the Big Media had enlisted their readers’ help in goingthrough the boxes of administrivia. In which case:

One embarrassing aspect of this episode, among several, is that major newspapers like the Times and the Post don’t seem to have the resources to review a few boxes of emails to determine whether there is anything there of interest. Otherwise, why would they solicit help from hundreds of readers? In my business, litigation, it is not unusual for parties to produce tens of millions of documents. A production of 13,000 emails would be considered minuscule. That our major newspapers evidently don’t have staff to do this minimal amount of work speaks volumes about their decline. – “Another embarrassment for the legacy media,” (Powerline June 10, 2011)

It’s not only people who vote for Palin’s party who have noticed. This story flew in Canada.

In the past, that level of reader collaboration with a story was usually impossible, quite apart from the fact that, to former media culture, it would be unthinkable. While these measures may stave off a specific stage of decline, they mostly demonstrate why the decline must proceed.

How will this stage of the decline of nanny media affect the design controversy? Read More ›