The New York Times
dblum | June 8, 2010 I was on the phone this afternoon with a friend at what I'll describe as a highly respected national-type newspaper, and we almost simultaneously broke into complaint about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
What set us off was NOAA's grudging admission of the day, that despite angry earlier denials, there were indeed swathes of oil-saturated water coiling for miles, under the surface of the Gulf, emanating away from the site of the BP pipe break.
As The New York Times noted: "the tests confirmed that some toxic compounds that would normally be expected to…
dblum | May 7, 2010 Let's start with some slightly, okay, more than slightly depressing numbers: Since the devastating explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig almost three weeks ago, more than 1.7 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and more than 250,000 gallons of chemical dispersant have been sprayed onto that spill in an effort to contain the damage.
Everyone agrees that it's the enormous slick of oil that we should really worry. But in the last week, questions have also been raised about the cleaning chemicals flooding into the Gulf. Although the amount pales, as they say,…
ddobbs | August 2, 2009
I just finished reading Erica Goode's Times story on the suicides of four soldiers who served together in a small North Carolina-based Guard unit in Iraq from 2006 to spring 2007. This is a witheringly painful story. Goode, who has done quite a bit of science writing as well as substantial reporting from Baghdad, tells it with an unusual freshness of perspective and clarity of vision.
She starts where I suppose she must:
On Dec. 9, 2007, Sergeant Blaylock, heavily intoxicated, lifted a 9-millimeter handgun to his head during an argument with his girlfriend and pulled the trigger. He was 26…
razib | July 29, 2009A quick follow up to the post below, I was curious as to the increased profile of Google in The New York Times (Google trends doesn't seem to be available to the public before 2004) around the turn of the century. In particular, I curious as to Google's prominence in the "Technology" section of the paper. So I looked it up. There were 78 mentions between July 1999 and December 2001. Mentions of Google increase at a rapid clip throughout this whole period. Below is a histogram of this period, illustrating the consistent rise in frequency of mention.
A dotchart view (x-axis = time along a…
razib | April 8, 2009The New York Times has an awesome interactive map which shows which sectors the foreign born from various countries are concentrated. Nothing too surprising, but nice to see it quantitatively displayed. Below the fold screenshots from "Computer software developers" and "Skilled construction workers."
amillikan | December 14, 2008Notable ScienceBlogs posts will now be featured daily in the Science Times section of The New York Times Online, directly below the top 10 most popular science items in the Times. Likewise, this link exchange will provide visitors to the ScienceBlogs home page one-click access to recent Science Times articles, further extending the largest conversation about science on the web.