That is why I stopped reading SciAm decades ago. The rot was already setting in with their abetting of the climate scam. I see things haven’t improved.
I first ran into Sci Am’s viewpoint in 1961. I was 9 year’s old, when they published a review of Herman Kahn’s “On Thermonuclear War”. It was a sheaf of hysteria that could not distinguish between what Kahn described in possible future weapons, and what he was advocating. I read through the book alongside a dictionary, when the library finally got a copy available. The review was as much fantasy as the piece of trash about E.O. Wilson under discussion.
I looked at back issues, and found that anti-military articles started in October, 1945. From that date onward, there was no article praising any weapons procurement I could find. There was also no article on economics that did not praise “Planned Economies”.
The influence of the University community was obvious. Since 1975 I haven’t been much interested in it, except where it had special editions that were about things that could be quantified. After 1990, they were simply too unreliable.
SciAm is no longer interested in either Science, or in America. They are interested in benefiting the University community.
I started subscribing while in highschool around 1971. I quickly realized that the first article every month was biased toward a particular viewpoint. The rest of the articles were actually approachable by someone like me who wanted to learn more.
I stopped subscribing when Martin Gardner made fun of his strawman misrepresentation of the so-called Laffer Curve, and when they made a big deal of some other pseudo-scientists giving Dan Quayle an “IgNoble” award for saying something that sounded stupid. Unlike a lot of scientists who wrote for them, J.Danforth never claimed to be an all-knowing expert on things outside his field.
Sci Am isn’t on drugs, they just know their audience – the “credentialed but uneducated” elite who adopt leftist politics as a status marker. A disease they caught from the British scientific community via periodicals like “The New Scientist” in the 90s.
Appalling…
Quillette reprinted a 2009 interview with Wilson that makes a very interesting read.
Dear God. I know I am fortunate to live in a slightly insulating bubble, a set of on-line communities where human biodiversity is not anathema, but I honestly had no idea how bad it was outside.
SciAm went bad in the 1980’s with their campaign against SDI. Bunch of commies.
I used to read it for C.L. Stong’s “The Amateur Scientist” column, which had lots of interesting DIY projects. In fact, my first laser was a homebuilt helium-neon job made according to instructions in the September 1964 issue. The rest rarely interested me, and as time went by and Stong retired, I read it less and less often, until it became brazenly anti-defense. So did AIAA’s Aerospace America, which I stopped reading in the early 1980s.
I’m with Jim Breeding — A lot of their articles in the ’70s were “over my head” (I was in grade school at the time), but it was fun to puzzle out what was being presented, as best as I could understand it.
I stopped reading Scientific American around 1990 when it became clear that they were pushing an eco-doomster point-of-view. It’s all so stupid. It would be one thing if the Earth were (in the thermodynamic sense) an isolated system, but it was always no more than a closed system, and it’s been an open system since Sputnik in ’57. And with open systems, the sky is the limit, as Jerry Pournelle knew — I wish “A Step Farther Out” was required reading in high school. But that would give the kids the “wrong idea”, I guess. (rolls eyes)
Agreed, I was in study hall and it was fun to go into the shelf that had the boxed Scientific Americans. Most of it was beyond me then but it was fascinating to read. But that was the early 70’s before the 80’s and 90’s turned it into a glossy paged, dumbed down shambling zombie.
“Jerry Pournelle knew — I wish “A Step Farther Out” was required reading in high school.”
Yes. I still have a dog-eared copy of it lying around. Wonder if Elon Musk has ever read it? Bezos knows about Gerard K. O’Neill that close enough I guess.
“Elon Musk is a vocal critic of the idea of overpopulation. According to Musk, proponents of the idea are misled by their immediate impressions from living in dense cities.[188] Because of the negative replacement rates in many countries, he expects that by 2039 the biggest issue will be population collapse, not explosion.”
He an Bezos clearly understand the idea of space resources/colonies that could support a solar system wide civilization of 100’s of billions or even trillions for 10K easily at a high standard of living.
I got a better scientific education reading Galaxy, Analog, and Worlds of If in the 1970s(collecting Analogs back to the 30s) than I did with SciAm. John Campbell of Astounding/Analog was a strange man, but darn, he was a wonderful promoter of engineering and real science.
I subscribed to SciAm for a year or so in the early 80s, along with National Geographic, but even then, both were going full commie.
Nowadays, I subscribe only to Aviation Leaks, but that is promoting “diversity” to the point that when renewal comes due in February, I won’t bother signing up for another 3 years.
“First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.”
Forgot where I saw it, but not too long ago I ran across some article that took a swipe at the “blank slate” folks who deny that human nature exists.
I checked Instapundit archives and ran across a post that notes a leftist inconsistency that holds gender but not racism to be a blank slate – “this leaves room for racist societal messages to shape [babies’] understanding of racism instead.”
Happily, he linked one of the author’s tweets. I followed the link for plenty of entertainment at every turn.
For a long while now I’ve concluded that people that breathtakingly racist and stupid couldn’t have risen to gas-station assistant manager except by hurling racist abuse at incredibly insecure folks who were desperate to be seen as “anti-racist” progressives, lest their peers and students turn on them.
Since Marxism is responsible for more death and suffering than racism or the transatlantic slave trade, when do we hold Marxists accountable for their ideology?
We should be more generous than they are. People of the past who held abhorrent ideologies, like Marxism, should be expunged from history but rather studied so distinctions can be made between professional accomplishments and the cult of terror that they belonged to. Punishing people in the past solves nothing, we need to hold the Marxist alive today to account for their actions and beliefs in the present, especially since DIE is based on creating systematic racism and punishing people based on their skin color.
Also, the stuff at the link isn’t anything new. Progressive Marxists pretend to be soooo serious while being oblivious to how evil their ideology is.
That piece is disgraceful, pure bilge.
That is why I stopped reading SciAm decades ago. The rot was already setting in with their abetting of the climate scam. I see things haven’t improved.
I first ran into Sci Am’s viewpoint in 1961. I was 9 year’s old, when they published a review of Herman Kahn’s “On Thermonuclear War”. It was a sheaf of hysteria that could not distinguish between what Kahn described in possible future weapons, and what he was advocating. I read through the book alongside a dictionary, when the library finally got a copy available. The review was as much fantasy as the piece of trash about E.O. Wilson under discussion.
I looked at back issues, and found that anti-military articles started in October, 1945. From that date onward, there was no article praising any weapons procurement I could find. There was also no article on economics that did not praise “Planned Economies”.
The influence of the University community was obvious. Since 1975 I haven’t been much interested in it, except where it had special editions that were about things that could be quantified. After 1990, they were simply too unreliable.
SciAm is no longer interested in either Science, or in America. They are interested in benefiting the University community.
I started subscribing while in highschool around 1971. I quickly realized that the first article every month was biased toward a particular viewpoint. The rest of the articles were actually approachable by someone like me who wanted to learn more.
I stopped subscribing when Martin Gardner made fun of his strawman misrepresentation of the so-called Laffer Curve, and when they made a big deal of some other pseudo-scientists giving Dan Quayle an “IgNoble” award for saying something that sounded stupid. Unlike a lot of scientists who wrote for them, J.Danforth never claimed to be an all-knowing expert on things outside his field.
Sci Am isn’t on drugs, they just know their audience – the “credentialed but uneducated” elite who adopt leftist politics as a status marker. A disease they caught from the British scientific community via periodicals like “The New Scientist” in the 90s.
Appalling…
Quillette reprinted a 2009 interview with Wilson that makes a very interesting read.
Dear God. I know I am fortunate to live in a slightly insulating bubble, a set of on-line communities where human biodiversity is not anathema, but I honestly had no idea how bad it was outside.
SciAm went bad in the 1980’s with their campaign against SDI. Bunch of commies.
I used to read it for C.L. Stong’s “The Amateur Scientist” column, which had lots of interesting DIY projects. In fact, my first laser was a homebuilt helium-neon job made according to instructions in the September 1964 issue. The rest rarely interested me, and as time went by and Stong retired, I read it less and less often, until it became brazenly anti-defense. So did AIAA’s Aerospace America, which I stopped reading in the early 1980s.
I’m with Jim Breeding — A lot of their articles in the ’70s were “over my head” (I was in grade school at the time), but it was fun to puzzle out what was being presented, as best as I could understand it.
I stopped reading Scientific American around 1990 when it became clear that they were pushing an eco-doomster point-of-view. It’s all so stupid. It would be one thing if the Earth were (in the thermodynamic sense) an isolated system, but it was always no more than a closed system, and it’s been an open system since Sputnik in ’57. And with open systems, the sky is the limit, as Jerry Pournelle knew — I wish “A Step Farther Out” was required reading in high school. But that would give the kids the “wrong idea”, I guess. (rolls eyes)
Agreed, I was in study hall and it was fun to go into the shelf that had the boxed Scientific Americans. Most of it was beyond me then but it was fascinating to read. But that was the early 70’s before the 80’s and 90’s turned it into a glossy paged, dumbed down shambling zombie.
“Jerry Pournelle knew — I wish “A Step Farther Out” was required reading in high school.”
Yes. I still have a dog-eared copy of it lying around. Wonder if Elon Musk has ever read it? Bezos knows about Gerard K. O’Neill that close enough I guess.
“Elon Musk is a vocal critic of the idea of overpopulation. According to Musk, proponents of the idea are misled by their immediate impressions from living in dense cities.[188] Because of the negative replacement rates in many countries, he expects that by 2039 the biggest issue will be population collapse, not explosion.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation#By_public_figures
He an Bezos clearly understand the idea of space resources/colonies that could support a solar system wide civilization of 100’s of billions or even trillions for 10K easily at a high standard of living.
I got a better scientific education reading Galaxy, Analog, and Worlds of If in the 1970s(collecting Analogs back to the 30s) than I did with SciAm. John Campbell of Astounding/Analog was a strange man, but darn, he was a wonderful promoter of engineering and real science.
I subscribed to SciAm for a year or so in the early 80s, along with National Geographic, but even then, both were going full commie.
Nowadays, I subscribe only to Aviation Leaks, but that is promoting “diversity” to the point that when renewal comes due in February, I won’t bother signing up for another 3 years.
“First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.”
Forgot where I saw it, but not too long ago I ran across some article that took a swipe at the “blank slate” folks who deny that human nature exists.
I checked Instapundit archives and ran across a post that notes a leftist inconsistency that holds gender but not racism to be a blank slate – “this leaves room for racist societal messages to shape [babies’] understanding of racism instead.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/398590/
Jerry Coyne is pretty devastating on this: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/30/scientific-american-does-an-asinine-hit-job-on-e-o-wilson-calling-him-a-racist/
Happily, he linked one of the author’s tweets. I followed the link for plenty of entertainment at every turn.
For a long while now I’ve concluded that people that breathtakingly racist and stupid couldn’t have risen to gas-station assistant manager except by hurling racist abuse at incredibly insecure folks who were desperate to be seen as “anti-racist” progressives, lest their peers and students turn on them.
Since Marxism is responsible for more death and suffering than racism or the transatlantic slave trade, when do we hold Marxists accountable for their ideology?
We should be more generous than they are. People of the past who held abhorrent ideologies, like Marxism, should be expunged from history but rather studied so distinctions can be made between professional accomplishments and the cult of terror that they belonged to. Punishing people in the past solves nothing, we need to hold the Marxist alive today to account for their actions and beliefs in the present, especially since DIE is based on creating systematic racism and punishing people based on their skin color.
Also, the stuff at the link isn’t anything new. Progressive Marxists pretend to be soooo serious while being oblivious to how evil their ideology is.
True slavery has never been tried!