re: #6 freetoken

Completely off topic… (so shoot me now) … but my frustration with supposedly “scientific” publications is growing ever more, being driven by what I observe as a rush to over-sensationalize just about any topic, in order (I surmise) to compete with the barrage of hot-button headlines that now courtesy of the internet come raining down upon us in non-stop fashion.

Anything from “habitable” planets to “quantum” computation is being pushed in headlines, the story bodies of which can’t support the headlines or even worse just dissolve into babble, as extremely abstruse topics are re-painted with popular language idioms that are quite unable to communicate the reality and will misinform the uneducated reader.

Our popular culture, and society in general, is now so far removed from the cutting edges of science (including applied science and engineering) that I don’t see how a popularly elected political system will be able to justify spending large amounts of money on new innovations without appealing to, well, “magic”.

I think this is more about the state of journalism here than about the distance between popular culture and science. It’s still probably unsolvable and will lead to the destruction of civilization as we know it though.

Happy holidays! (There, I helped things along…)