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From: bpvanstr@yoho.uwaterloo.ca (Brian Van Straalen)
Subject: Re: Sci. Am:an old friend is very ill...
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Date: Thu, 15 Jun 1995 19:00:20 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.alife:3663 comp.ai:30672 sci.bio:28351 sci.physics:125680

In article <3rk1ib$jnp@nrcnet0.nrc.ca>,
Peter Turney  <peter@ai.iit.nrc.ca> wrote:

>
>YES!! Maybe if enough people complain, they'll drop the staff-written
>articles. I also hate the "Science in Pictures" so-called articles.
>
>There have been some good changes: Putting the author bios and
>references with the articles, instead of grouping them all together
>on a separate page. The paired articles, presenting competing views
>on a controversial topic (Chinese Room argument; Eve theory; language
>evolution).
>

 
 Agreed.  Sci.Am still needs good staff writers to help the scientists
properly express themselves to a larger reading audience, but I'm not
very interested in a `technical writer's ' perspective of the issues.
There are enough magazines that feature staff writers.  Staff writers
are fine for the little sprinkled articles where there might not be
an available objective scientist available, but all features deal with
science topics that have obvious candidates in the scientific community.

   The `Pretty-Picture-Pages' articles are mightily uninformative. I
imagine advertiser pressure has something to do with these articles.

	Brian Van Straalen


