Is the readership of NS non-specialist, as in Sun Reader? I doubt it, the majority I would expect to have a decent brain in their head and be able to use it. It's still a difficult job to explain something without making it too Janet & John though.
Telephone Sanitisers, you must have Telephone Sanitisers. Do you know how many disease you could catch from a telephone?
42 ?
Yes it is, it's where the job ads are!
Particularly if you keep your phone in the toilet.
No, but I know someone who can.
not that hard to blow valves and make an AM radio.
Its all a question of how far the infrastructure falls.
I reckon, given enough scrap metal around, I could make a forge and start making basic tools, and in time, build something like a sailing boat. and a reasonable working compass. Clocks would be a lot harder tho.
In message , Clot writes
I agree. I've also read New Scientist on and off for nearly as long, and indeed have been a subscriber for a good many years. In the earlier years most of the articles were written by scientists themselves, and tended to be accurate and authoritative. No doubt some editorial action was needed to remove jargon and improve the explanation, but most good scientists (and even quite a lot of bad ones) are only too happy to try to explain their work at the level that an intelligent layman can understand. Scientific American gets on fine using mostly scientists as writers.
It is such a pity that NS editors in recent years seem to have decided that it is only journalists who can be trusted to explain things. As a result articles are dumbed down, and by no means as good as they could be.
The owners of NS are lucky that so far there isn't a competing weekly in the UK with the editorial standards of Scientific American.
You make an interesting point. Is it that recent editors have chosen to use journalists or that scientists are not prepared to provide the text?
I agree.
Hmm, not sure I do. I stopped taking Scientific American when it had dumbed down too much for me. One of my simple pleasures was to read back copies of the SciAm in the library at Uni. This was before the Internet. I got rid of my own collection of many year's worth in a house move.
Sid.
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