Here’s a story in the latest issue of Conservation magazine that should raise some hackles: Social Scientists have long understood that corruption has disastrous effects on struggling economies and people, with the poorest suffering the brunt of that impact. What is now becoming clearer is corruption’s devastating impact on ecosystems””and on the business of conservation…Continue Reading…
There’s a passage in Ross Douthat’s NYT column today that struck me as analogous to the decline of environmentalism. So I made the appropriate word substitutions: Thanks in part to this bunker mentality, American Christianity environmentalism has become what Hunter calls a “weak culture” “” one that mobilizes but doesn’t convert, alienates rather than seduces,…Continue Reading…
My favorite archaeology blogger will be returning sometime today or tomorrow as a guest host. I think it will be brief, probably just one post related to this recent controversial story (unless I can convince him to stick around longer). And I’m hoping to squeeze a few climate change related guest posts out of someone…Continue Reading…
Ok, everybody who’s shocked by the news of this internal email communication raise their hands. Fox News is slanted? And that slant is being enforced by its producers? Look, it’s always good when stuff like this comes to light, if only to further puncture the absurd facade that Fox is actually [cough, cough] “fair and…Continue Reading…
The WikiLeaks release of 250,000 diplomatic cables continues to discomfit many journalists. In his recent media column, David Carr writes that WikiLeaks does not share the same values or objectives [as a traditional news organization]. Mr. Assange and the site’s supporters see transparency as the ultimate objective, believing that sunshine and openness will deprive bad…Continue Reading…
I have no idea what an editor does over at ScienceBlogs. I doubt they do any actual editing of blogs. But evidently they get to choose their favorite posts, the way a clerk advertises his top ten flicks at your local movie rental store. So my eye drifted to a recent number one “editor’s pick”…Continue Reading…
In its current issue, The New Yorker has an excellent piece on the prevalence of (unconscious) bias in scientific studies that builds on this recent must-read piece in The Atlantic. And to some extent, Jonah Lehrer’s New Yorker article builds on this story he did for Wired in 2009. Anyone interested in the scientific process…Continue Reading…
George Monbiot bores into the reporting (past and present) of the UK’s David Rose, who seems to have a stellar record of getting big stories wrong. But Monbiot should have spread the blame around, because as Daniel Okrent noted in his own castigation of the NY Times’ WMD coverage in the run-up to the Iraq…Continue Reading…
I’ve been teaching journalism at NYU since 2005. I’m an adjunct there, and I usually teach one or two courses a year. It’s one of the most professionally gratifying things I do. Nothing pleases me more than when a student gets that rush of excitement from a story he or she is working on for…Continue Reading…
Over at Real Climate, Ray Pierrehumbert has a meaty post that takes up this assertion by Ramanathan and Victor in their recent NYT op-ed: Reducing soot and the other short-lived pollutants would not stop global warming, but it would buy time, perhaps a few decades, for the world to put in place more costly efforts…Continue Reading…