punditry
hrynyshyn | February 12, 2010David Roberts at Grist, riffing on This American Life's Ira Glass, nails it on the head:
"...news reporting is declining in part because of just this phenomenon: reporters do not react like human beings. The audience doesn't see or hear themselves in most news reporting. When covering something amazing, reporters are not allowed express awe. When covering something unexpected, they're not allowed to express surprise. And when faced with conservatives celebrating and reinforcing one another's ignorance, they're not allowed to show gall or outrage. Or mock.
People reading these stories get "the…
hrynyshyn | October 22, 2009Not being a regular, or even occasional, listener of Rush Limbaugh, I have no idea if this week's obscene call for New York Times climate reporter Andy Revkin to commit suicide was simply par for the course. We all know that Limbaugh is an entertainer who is just doing what he needs to do to attract attention, maintain audiences and retain advertiser support. It's a free country (for most of us). But I'm a journalist and I cover climate change, too. So this hits too close to home to ignore.
On Tuesday, Limbaugh's radio show included this line: "Mr. Revkin, why don't you just go kill yourself…
hrynyshyn | May 5, 2009Which of these recent developments raises your eyebrows the highest?
Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists. (The Guardian, May 3, 2009)
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has decided to accept all federal stimulus money her state is eligible for, with one exception: the nearly $29 million for the state energy office. Ms. Palin has rejected the state energy office funds out of concern that it would obligate Alaska to enact more stringent building codes. "Alaska's vast…
hrynyshyn | May 16, 2007Pity the poor rationalist, who won't have Jerry Falwell to kick around any more. Gone is one of the leading opponents of reasoned debate, a man who seemed to devote every waking hour to turning the clock back on the Enlightenment. I have no idea how good a family man he was, but his public persona was one of open hostility to tolerance, diversity and science. Just how significant he was -- and therefore how significant is his death -- is far from clear, but I suspect that this morning's eulogies greatly exaggerate his lasting influence.
What's consuming the nation's obituarists today is the…
hrynyshyn | September 18, 2006Something is very wrong at Amazon.com. Maybe whoever programs the software that matches purchase patterns with new releases has a strange sense of humor, but the recommendation that showed up in my email box this morning suggests remedial action is in order.
A couple of years ago, I bought, from Amazon, a copy of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything for my father-in-law. This may have been a mistake, as my father-in-law hasn't been in the greatest shape since then. (One could argue that he's in great shape for someone on the far side of 80, but things certainly did start to go…
hrynyshyn | August 23, 2006Carl has added Jack Kemp to his pantheon of creationist-friendly pols after coming across the Republican presidential-wannabe's latest column, which attempts to cast doubt on the notion that pro-evolution forces aren't doing as well as the liberal media would have us believe.
I second Carl's motion and draw your attention to what has to be one of the most absurd comments to follow the publication of everyone's favorite anti-intellectual screed, Ann Coulter's Godless. Here's Kemp describing the reaction to the book:
Despite bitter denunciations by liberals, funny thing, there has been a…
hrynyshyn | July 19, 2006Could it be a coincidence that this column summarizing the political right's infatuation with bad science in England appeared only a couple of days after Chris "Republican War on Science" Mooney arrived in London?
Polly Toynbee of the Guardian writes about the right-wing's shift from climate-change denialism to nuke-power advocacy. She suggests it's all part of a pathetic trend:
The old right has been on an arduous journey, with most finally converted to the truth universally acknowledged, except by flat-earthers: the world is warming at life-on-earth threatening speed. When the climate-…
hrynyshyn | June 16, 2006I wasn't going to wade into the Stephen-Hawking-has-lost-it debate, but then I came across an otherwise unrelated story this morning pitting Cosmologist Numero Uno against the late Pope John Paul II.
For those unfamiliar with the fuss, Hawking had the nerve last week to publicly support the idea of colonizing the Moon and Mars because, he said, things are looking pretty dicy down here on Earth.
As Stein so eloquently put it at Dynamics of Cats, "Hawking is not being ridicilous. At worst he is being pessimistic about the time scale for major potential catastrophes, and optimistic on feasible…
hrynyshyn | June 13, 2006What should we do with the likes of Ann Coulter?
More than a few people are upset with her recent comments disparaging the 9/11 widows. Her new book wastes a lot of trees misrepresenting evolution. Ed takes umbrage at her self-comparison with H.L. Mencken. For me it was Mark Twain. Clearly this is a person with little or no grasp of reality, history or decency. The easy answer is to ignore her. But I'm not yet convinced that's a good idea.
Sunday's re-run of a "60 Minutes" interview with Mel Brooks included a segment in which Brooks suggested the best way to deal with Hitler's legacy was to…