G.Shelley: How does science news compare with the big three monthly science magazines (Discover, Scientific American and Popular Science)?

Those are 80% ads, they are bulky and heavy and annoying to carry around, and their articles are too long, and for that reason, too selective and too few (so they don’t actually report on what’s happening in the sciences, they just report a few things they want to report on), and they don’t just report the facts but act like Time magazine or something and try to find “the story” and spin everything to fit the framework they’ve chosen. They are also verbose (their articles could be cut to a third with zero loss of information content). All the things I hate about magazines. That’s why I like Science News: it’s exactly the opposite on every count.

F: Is it still fairly thin (physically)?

Both mags are, yes.

Dan: Is The Week an actual print magazine? Or an RSS feed?

Print, of course. The RSS thing was just an analogy. But I’ve just made this clearer in the original blog. Thanks for noting the possible confusion.

Also, how does Science News compare to New Scientist? I was thinking of subscribing to the latter, because I hear about it much more and the website is very nice, but I’d like to consider alternatives before I take the plunge.

I have not read NS so I can’t answer that. I would love it if someone did a compare and contrast here for me. It claims to be “the most comprehensive” weekly (which can only be a veiled diss on SN), so it would be worth it to know.

Matthew: Regarding its political bent, I’d say The Week is “British neutral,” that is, it’s actually a UK company (and the original version is still published there), and in my experience it maintains political neutrality in terms of what that would mean in the UK, which is slightly left of center by U.S. standards, only because we are so bizarrely extreme in our conservative side (many conservative publications here are a joke, as much as any Berkeley vegan flower power weekly would be; whereas most major liberal publications at least try to be professional and objective, e.g. they will actually fairly present both sides [in fact sometimes beyond reason], which is something most conservative pubs don’t do well [not that liberal pubs always do it well either]).

For example, in The Week most stories are selected and reported completely apolitically. But when there is a major story that is reported very differently by both political wings, The Week will produce an amalgamated article that tells you the gist of what each side said (sometimes from multiple sources each; so, you’ll hear political commentary from Forbes next to the LA Times, or the gist of what Krauthammer said next to the gist of what Huffington said). And when they select editorials to feature (and summarize), I have seen those come from conservative commentators and periodicals as often as not. In fact, this is one of the reasons I love The Week. No one else does this, really.

Of course, the effect of this is often not good for the conservative side. Even fairly represented, juxtaposing their arguments with the other side’s rarely makes them look good. But that wouldn’t be the fault of The Week. By the same token, sometimes the liberals look dumb in comparison. It’s notable that they generally just let each side speak for itself (they aim at honestly representing what they meant and that’s it). The reader then evaluates.

I’m a former subscriber of The Week, and because of this post, have renewed my subscription via my Nook tablet, which makes it far easier for me to cart it about with me to boring meetings (surreptitiously of course), medical appointments and the like. I agree, it is a gem among news magazines. And double thanks for suggesting Science News. Can’t afford the subscription fee, but will get it when I can afford it (now here’s the place where one could wish to call out to Jebus for support, ahh, but to no avail).

And what of the saint’s relics? Are the remains entombed in the sarcophagus in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice really his? What of the skull in Alexandria that the Coptic Church claims belongs to the saint? What of the relic, possibly a bone fragment, said to be Mark’s, given to Egypt by the Vatican in 1968, in effect as an apology for the ninth-century theft? Are any of these relics, including that tiny piece of bone in the church in Kerala attributed to Thomas, genuine?
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“It’s not important if they have the real bones or not,” Ortalli said, “because in the Middle Ages they had a very different mentality. You could have 50 fingers of a saint. It wasn’t a problem.”