I used to read Scientific American with interest and wonder. My favorite column was The Amateur Scientist because it had so many neat experiments and projects. Now, it is mostly with sadness and incredulity that I occasionally glance at it on the newsstand. I don’t bother subscribing or even buying it for an interesting article TAS article anymore. They’ve lost their way.
Grist magazine wrote on July 24th:
What would the world look like without people?
This is the latest in a series of Saturday GINK videos about population and reproduction (or a lack thereof).
In honor of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which we recently profiled, here are two videos showing what would happen if we humans suddenly up and disappeared.
I’m shaking my head as I watch this SciAm video, they have an animated musclebound synthetic person as the spokesman wearing a SciAm t-shirt. Yes, it’s that bad. They seem to forget where they came from and who they cater to.
Of course there’s the obligatory “global warming” mention, still going strong after 1000 years, turning NYC’s central park into an African jungle, complete with elephants.
And it’s not just Scientific American pushing this stuff. Nat Geo (another magazine I used to enjoy) also has a video out on the topic that looks like…like…oh heck just watch it, I can’t even describe it.
In both SciAm and the NatGeo videos they destroy the statue of liberty. I guess either they dislike what it represents, or they have so little creative talent that they have to borrow from the famous scene with Charlton Heston from Planet of the Apes, the original human decline disaster movie.
It’s fine by me if the people at Voluntary Human Extinction Movement want to recuse themselves from Earth, and I’d be totally OK if SciAm, and NatGeo met with extinction, but please, leave the rest of the human race out of your plans. I notice that the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is still around, so much for leadership.
Me? I’m going to celebrate life.
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I can relate. SA used to be a part of my regular reading. Loved Skeptic, checking out historical issues, and of course the features. About two or three years ago I started noticing the abundance of one-sided articles on AGW and climate change.
Long story short I cancelled my subscription along with those for my super science geek dad and brother. No more SA discussions when we’re all together for the holidays. Boo.
I remember how Scientific American used to be, before it got sold in 1986 to a group in Germany that proceeded, over time, to politicize and dumb it down. Maybe it was already on its way down in quality at that point, I don’t remember clearly. It was a solid scientific journal on the newsstands East Side, West Side, all around the town and frequent, I would guess, in many a place across the USA, not to mention a blizzard of offprints on campuses. I remember as a kid discovering that I could understand the average article there till about 2/3 of the way through, when the technical material for other scientists started coming thick and fast. And the front covers were truly beautiful in the old days. The old SciAm had a lot of class. Well, if I sing “Those were the days,” the young ‘uns will hear “Doze were de daze,” but if you hear it like sung by Jack Bruce with Cream, that’s more the spirit.
SciAm was preaching the apocalypse in March 1998 when they published The End of Cheap Oil. I guess peak oil didn’t have the burning hell and computer models AGW does.
What the above commenters have said.
I used to read SA regularly. No longer. The bias has become so in-your-face that I can’t stand to even look at a cover anymore – let alone open up an issue.
Pity.
I suppose this voluntary extinction cult is the logical end of socialism: the redistribution of everything possessed by humans, including the body.
I posted the following last year after another flap SciAm was behind, I think it’s worth reposting here. I’ll turn it into a web page some day.
Papa Ray (18:11:41) :
No, it is in one of the most valued Scientific publications there was.
In the 1970s, SciAm had a well-earned reputation for bring new science to the intelligent layman’s attention. Their main articles were not about the most recent research, but pulled together many little items of research to describe new knowledge and new technologies.
For example, I remember important articles about photosynthesis as that chemical pathway was getting settled, on lasers and holography when they were making the transition from laboratory curiosity to tool. In high school I summarized a paper on electrophoresis from various reprints our biology teacher had ordered.
Other features of the magazine changed people for life. For me, Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games was a favorite – I can still make a hexaflexagon and made several Soma Cubes from 2″x2″ oak stock 15 years ago. Others went to Jearl Walker’s The Citizen Scientist and did the experiments or made the tools he described. And of course, there were the Questar Telescope ads to drool over.
However, the creation of new magazines aimed at a market between Popular Science and Scientific American flooded the market and advertising revenue dried up. Eventually SciAm was sold to a German company and its golden age was over, never to be regained.
The magazine occasionally took a look at political issues, and that increased greatly after the sale. I bought a copy once because it had an article on the GPS system, but was extremely disappointed. Pretty pictures, virtually no content. Recently they have fully embraced AGW and science as seen by “The Team.”
I took a look at those seven points. There is nothing there that gives a balanced look at the issues involved. It would be fun to rewrite it to be as balanced as possible. I’m sure you would agree that “The most recent contrarian fad is based largely on work by Henrik Svensmark” is rejecting his work even before there are any results from CLOUD. For heaven’s sake, Svensmark has an interesting hypothesis, it’s being tested, it may pan out, it may be junk. Fad? Come on. The author doesn’t understand Scientific Method.
“Claim 5: Climatologists conspire to hide the truth about global warming by locking away their data.” Umm, if you’re reading here, you should realized that claim is the subject of substantial review. Hey – they say “surely the thousands of e-mails and other files stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and distributed by hackers on November 20 would bear proof of it. So far, however, none has emerged.” Yeah, right.
The first comment on the article says “jercarobrien1 at 10:36 AM on 11/30/09: The narrow, biased and unscientific perspective presented in your article causes me to continue to lose respect for your magazine’s scientific credibility and objectivity.”
My father saved decades of SciAms, my sister maintained the tradition until she moved to California. We talked about what to do with them, and sadly agreed to let them go. But I saved Henry and Elizabeth Stommel’s article on Volcano Weather, that lives on as my 1816 web page. How long do you save your Scientific Americans?
Ok guys you first…
This has the whiff of well oiled jackboots about it…
I can actually understand this movement. I mean, why would anybody want to live in the world the AGW cultists have planned for us?
‘Bout the same story here. Read Sci Am for decades, starting in the early 70’s. Then we reached the parting of the ways. I have not yet found a suitable replacement.
I have only two words for the Voluntary Extinction Movement, “You First”.
mr.b
http://motivateurself.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/deus-ex.jpeg
Everytime you mention it, some will reinstall it.
Its pathetic (really damn utterly pathetic) because SA could be using enormous resources solving real problems.
Also….what species ever on the face of this planet has ever volunteered to “extictify” itself?
None. Zero. Zilch.
Are we opportunistic? You bet.
Have mistakes been made? Absolutely.
But GEEZ-US homo sapiens have done some pretty damn good things to, so cut them a break, VHEM.
Better yet, VHEM….why don’t you guys volunteer for “extinctification”…that will be a great step. For all of us.
You will not be missed.
But hell, if that is what you believe in, then have at it and I am all for it.
Come on, put your money where your mouth is.
[snip]
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
The Voluntary Extinction whackweeds — like the Reduce Your Carbon Footprint ones — are all in favor of everyone *else* doing it.
Themselves? Mmmmmm — not so much…
”
So that explains why conveniently there are no bodies in the first video. No more babies are born apparently?
Any one who elects a person who secretly or openly believes in population reduction is a fool. Time to start asking that question of any one who runs for office or works in other gov’t agencies.
Martin Gardner born 1914 died May 22, 2010 at age 96. His “Mathematical Games” column in the old Scientific American was unbeatable… in 1970, as we recall, he introduced general readers to John Horton Conway’s “Game of Life”, an early use of computer iteration to generate “cellular automata” by simple rules, then track evolving patterns over generations on a matrix depicting various “survival mechanisms.” Esoteric, fascinating, with deep implications, yet Gardner made “Conway Games” intelligible and fun.
Sometime in the mid-1980s, like Pinch Sulzberger’s benighted New York Times, the fine old monthly somehow went astray, defaulting to an ill-becoming pop-cult mode. Increasingly dumbed down, prey to Femyap superficiality, SA regressed to poorly written entry-levels where most articles remain. Symptomatic of broad-gauge secular decline, SA’s lapsed standards are indicative of the feckless asininities propagated throughout so-called Climate Studies today.
What would a world without humans be like? Pretty boring, in the main, I’d say. A world with humans is way more interesting!
I have the same problem with SciAm, NewSci and NatGeo. All the same old, same old, and even if you are not aware of the significant and widening cracks in the theory, it must get very tedious.
My proposal: A world without (Hidden) Global Warming Alarmists. Now that is a world I could learn to love!
“Hurricanes, Tornados and Thunderstorms” was the title of my 6th grade thesis written in 1946. Its bibliography cited three references to Scientific American articles. In 1952, I saved up and susbscribed to the magazine, my basement now contains several large boxes containg most issues from 1952 until the present. I detest the magazine now and read very few of the articles. I can’t bear to stop my subscription as it would be like shooting and old friend.
Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH is the German owned publisher of “Scientific American” as well as “Nature”. The founder of the company was a member of the NAZI party and served it well through various favorable publications. A grandson, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, is the present chairman of the company and apparently has a marxist- socialist agenda. At an Erich Fromme Society event, Stefan von Holtzbrinck presented an award to Noam Chomsky. That’s a whole lot of folks well to the left of Ted Williams’ when he played for the Bo’socks.
– Steve
Tony, what do you have against these nice movies?
1. SciAm claims, there will be GW. Mention! It will happen 1000 years AFTER men extinct. [b] So, it should be purely natural!!! [/b]
2. These are NOT sci fi movies. Visit Russia. Not Moscow that is floureshing. But, say, 200 km out of it, or just 50 km out of St. Petersburg, there are towns and villages that were abandoned, and you will exactly what they show in these cartoons.
Reading Grist’s profile interview with VHMT’s Les U. Knight [“get it?”] it’s not hard to see why he concludes that people and the Planet would be better off without him.
Makes me want to have another kid…
What would a world without humans look like?
I guess it doesn’t matter to us, does it?
What an exercise in mental masturbation! I am sorry, but I read through their website, and the idea that people who have kids are inferior is just all over the place. I have never been so disgusted by the lack of spine in a group than I am here. Big shame on the enablers of this movement (SCI-AM, Nat-Geo). Enjoy your extinction! I’ll be sure to tell my kids about you when they come home from school talking about lemmings.
P.S. I think I should receive a golden-snip award for refraining from what I really want to say.
Aren’t these guys pretty much the same as imams who convince their followers to become suicide bombers but never see fit to lead by example?
Shades of N.I.C.E from C S Lewis’ That Hideous Strength
Read it!
I don’t read SciAm anymore, nor do I read Popular Science or Popular Mechanics or The Economist. They have all become watered down pop culture magazines engaging in “windsock” journalism. By “windsock” I mean they simply report the meme they perceive as popular rather than any actual critical thinking.
They all seem scared to death to come ask any serious questions that might make certain individuals in academia (the kewl kids) uncomfortable in any way.
“Me? I’m going to celebrate life.”
… Well I’m doing that right now Anthony. Got my cup of coffee, my feet up and my computer on…. I love the world I live in. I’m like a cat it in a patch of sunlight. The more comfortable I am…. The more contented I am.
If the volunteer extinction movement wants to disappear themselves…. fine. Don’t let the door hit you on th’ ass on yer way out guys…. 🙂