Open Letter to Popular Science

December 13, 2004

Mark Jannot, Editor
Popular Science

Dear Mr. Jannot:

I was a reader of Popular Science in my twenties. I recently re-subscribed on a whim, when some local school kids on a magazine drive rang my doorbell. My first issue arrived today (January 2005), and the first thing I read was your editorial, “Political Science.” I was pleased, and a little surprised, frankly, to see the words “political” “science” and “journalistic integrity” in the same piece.

I’m a science fiction writer, and one of the prime requirements of the trade is knowing the difference between science and fiction. I think it’s a distinction that Americans are increasingly unqualified to make, for a variety of reasons, including watered-down science curricula in primary and secondary schools, and a mass media that is increasingly fearful of boring its audience or alienating those whose political and religious beliefs make empiricism a four-letter word.

I applaud your editorial stance, especially since it may cost you readers. I will encourage my friends and acquaintances to subscribe to Popular Science.

Best Wishes,

Bob Howe

Nature Trip

New York City has ocean beaches and wildlife areas, including the salt marsh pictured below at the Gerritsen Inlet.

Class Trip

Last week , and myself went to the New York Hall of Science in Queens. Though there was a regrettable lack of dingos and a concomitant surplus of children, we had a great time.

Mencken Vindicated

The folks at Snopes Urban Legends Reference Page confirm the prescience of America’s most famous cynic on the devolution of the presidency:

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

H.L. Mencken, 1920

Atlas Gagged

I was reading skimming the New York Times Book Review today when a full-page advertisement for Bauman Rare Books caught my eye. It seems a first edition of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is going for $16,000. That’s American money. Special editions of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling, are going for $850 and $1,500 respectively. That says everything you need to know about the state of American intellectual life.