Swans on Tea

This is the kind of post I start reading, and I begin to furrow my eyebrows as phrases and sentences pop up that don’t seem right or are obviously wrong. I though it was just bad science journalism, but realized it’s a rant-y agenda piece, with the supposed “science” reporting as a [...]

Researchers tug at molecules with optical tweezers
MIT researchers have developed a novel technique to measure the strength of the bonds between two protein molecules important in cell machinery: Gently tugging them apart with light beams.
They don’t really go into what’s novel about this. The optical tweezers technique has been around for a while.

So, Blake wrote a post on What Science Blogs Can’t Do
Deedle dee dee-dee
Brian at Lealaps weighed in
If you know absolutely nothing about evolutionary biology, physics, ecology, or any other discipline you care to name you are not going to find the equivalent of a college course here on the science blogosphere. That doesn’t mean that [...]

Some more great discussion over at Science after Sunclipse: What Science Blogs Can’t Do
My thesis is that it’s not yet possible to get a science education from reading science blogs, and a major reason for this is because bloggers don’t have the incentive to write the kinds of posts which are necessary. Furthermore, when [...]

Plastics unite to make unexpected ‘metal’
Both TTF and TCNQ are electrical insulators. But Morpurgo’s team found that a 2-nanometre-thick strip along the interface between the two crystals conducts electricity as well as a metal.
So it’s “metal” in the sense that it’s plastic, but conducts very well along the interface. Apparently using “conductor” in the [...]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Newly born identical twin stars show surprising differences
The identical twins were discovered in the Orion Nebula, a well-known stellar nursery, that is 1,500 light years away. The newly formed stars are about 1 million years old. With a full [...]

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Churchill, inspired by Twain, pre-internet.
Genepax Unveils a Car That Runs on Water and Air
Try again, you sensationalizing hacks. Versions of this story have spread across the web like a bad rash.
Their new [...]

I was poking around the toobz (looking for a citation or link to something about “slow light”) and ran across this press release from last year that made me clench and then start grinding my teeth. I have no idea who vets these things, but OMFG, it’s bad. The press latches onto these [...]

The New York Times covers blogging

It’s also pepsi-through-the-nose funny, especially if you are a reasonably strict grammarian.
Read about the f’amazing Dr. Novoselov

Over at Cosmic Variance, a discussion about getting the message of science out, in the context of the recent EXPELLED! brouhaha.
To the Framers, what’s going on is an essentially political battle; a public-relations contest, pitting pro-science vs. anti-science, where the goal is to sway more people to your side. And there is no doubt [...]

While poking around looking into the DST-doesn’t-save-energy story, looking for something that didn’t just link back to the WSJ story, I ran across this: a new lamp being hyped by some sites with a “green” tint, called Gravia. (a second story is here at treehugger)
The lamp took second place in the Greener Gadgets [...]