Scientific American Magazine

[herpguy]

I just subscribed to the magaine, Scientic American, its pretty cool. This is their website u should subscribe if you think it looks cool.

[ydoaPs]

sure it looks cool, but how do i know they aren't just trying to get my address so they can stalk me more efficiently?

[herpguy]

this probably won't reasure you that it's safe, but i just got the december issue.

[Klaynos]

gogo new scientist....

 

http://www.newscientist.com/

 

Just my preference (and physics world oc)

[rakuenso]

Nature > All

 

End of Discussion

[ydoaPs]

this probably won't reasure you that it's safe, but i just got the december issue.

i got it like three weeks ago:D

[theman]

sciam is great, i buy it from the newsstand at every opportunity. subscirption is more than worth it

[crhto]

sure it looks cool, but how do i know they aren't just trying to get my address so they can stalk me more efficiently?

 

I lie awake at night and wonder that exact same thing.

[Pangloss]

I'm still a SciAm subscriber, but their turn towards political correctness over the last couple of years has gotten a little annoying. They've taken up a somewhat virulently pro global warming stance, and frequently editorialize against the Bush administration. Not that the Bush administration doesn't deserve criticism, but I don't read SciAm for political opinion. I read it for objective, scientific reasoning.

[zyncod]

They also "editorialize" against people like Thabo Mbeki when he says unscientific things like: "This HIV drug (which is the same thing as dry cleaning fluid) that South Africans invented should be used, and Western remedies should not, since it is a South African problem. Also, I'm not setting up a program to give antiretrovirals to pregnant women even though this has been proven to reduce the chances of transmission to their babies by 50%."

<<Not a real quote>>

 

It's a scientific magazine, and they realize that science does not operate outside the human sphere, including the political world. And when people (Bush) say unscientific things like "Intelligent design deserves equal time" or "Fishery salmon is a source of biodiversity; therefore, we don't need the Endangered Species Act to preserve wild salmon," SciAm calls them on it.

[AL]

I agree with zyncod on this. Being objective does not mean refusing to take a position on an issue. To the contrary, if all the evidence leans heavily to one side, it would be unobjective to present a fence-straddling position. Now I think it's perfectly OK to disagree with Sciam's presentation of the facts (whether or not the evidence really does lean to one side) and the position they hold as a result of it, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect them not to take a position.

 

Just thought I'd add further though that SciAm's editorializing is for the most part really restricted to about one page in the whole magazine, unless you also count Michael Shermer's skeptic column, and sometimes Steve Mirsky's antigravity column, for which Mirsky has taken heat for poking fun at "evolution is just a theory" disclaimer stickers and things of that sort.

[Bluenoise]

Nature > All

 

End of Discussion

 

I second that nature owns all those other mags.

 

Though it is definatley more technical... You have to be pretty hardcore to read it.

And costs about 5 times as much for the yearly subscription' date=' but it is weekly so you get almost 5 times the number of issues, and each is pretty thick. So it evens out, well if you're up for reading a full magazine everyweek. I let my subscription run out recently, my life has gotten far to busy for all the reading... sigh...

 

But yeah if you're just interested in reading the daily news, nature is the place to get it. www.nature.com

[AL]

I second that nature owns all those other mags.

Well, apples and oranges. SciAm is a pop-sci magazine, whereas Nature is an actual peer-reviewed journal. You use SciAm to get the latest science news in a condensed format that is easy and fun to read. You use Nature to do serious literature review and research. Of course you can read Nature front to back for fun too, but if you're reading that many technical journal articles a week, I doubt you'd get more than a cursory understanding of the material presented (unless you're an actual researcher and the articles are all relevant to your field, the latter being doubtful in the case of Nature since it is an multidisciplinary journal encompassing a wide range of subjects).

 

SciAm reports on many of the most interesting results that get published in Nature anyway, so you can get straight to the meat and not have to sift through filler.

[Bluenoise]

Well nature is really more like a hybrid of the two. Only about 1/3-1/2 of it consits of peer-reviewed articles. The rest are mainly news articles and essays which I can't see most people having any trouble with.

 

But I see your point, it's not very light reading.

 

btw given my field of research most papers published with in nature are well within my range of full understanding. Most are biology or chemistry related. The only things that I don't really go into are the more mathy physics ones. But you only get a couple pages of those in most issues. I'm going to attempt to get back in touch with math and physics next time I have some real free time in my life.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I'm actually looking into subscribing to Scientific American as a supplement to New Scientist. The post office here seems to like stealing my New Scientist before it gets to me, so I think I'm going to like the Digital Subscription option...