My hand hovered over the August issue of SEED last night in the magazine section of a bookshop. I was not really sure whether I was going to buy it or not, to be honest. Then I glanced through, and two things made me go for it. The first was seeing that there’s something on Chuck Hoberman. I love his designs and constructions, and am dismayed by the fact that they are not just everywhere in our cityscapes. The second was a photograph. There’s some extracts from the collection of photographs of Nobel Prize winners taken by Peter Badge (beware, the cover makes you think that all 295 are in the magazine… there’s actually eight). I flipped to that part of the magazine and landed immediately upon the one of David Gross. It’s just great, in that it captures certain aspects of David just perfectly. There’s the intensely penetrating gaze of a great physicist combined with playful movie-star quality of the same. You end up convinced that if Hollywood was casting an actor to play the physicist, they’d have no choice but to use him to play himself.
There looks to be some interesting things in there to read. I see that there’s a piece on Science Journalism by Chris Mooney (also available here), and there’s what reads a bit like a commercial by Paul Steinhardt for his cyclic universe models with Neil Turok, and a discussion about the definition of life by Carl Zimmer. I hope it’s all as good a read as it looks.
-cvj
I’m also a fan. You may recall my enthusiastic early post trying to get people to read it back in 2005 when it first came out. I was what you might call an early adopter. (Or an early new adopter, since it was a relaunch of the magazine.) Have a look at the post. “Science is Culture”, their banner motto, was surely written by someone who has a similar world view to me. However, I don’t find every issue riveting, but that’s not the fault of the magazine. I just have far too much to read, as it is (let’s start with a new New Yorker every week, for example), and so tend to get a bit picky. They’re now offering ridiculously low annual subscriptions, I noticed from all the annoying bits of card dripping from every other page (as is so common with magazines now)… can’t decide whether to get yet another regular arrival to torture me regularly, or stick with the current pattern, which does mean that it gets me down to the magazine stand to browse and mingle with other human beings from time to time. Not a bad thing in itself.
Cheers,
-cvj
Dear Clifford, I have a subscription to Seed. With my foreign subscription rate, and unlivable salary, and Italian random (or never) mail delivery, that should tell you that I really love the magazine! It’s worth every bit of my effort to have it. Enjoy! Ciao.
I bought that issue earlier this summer. Verdict: while I really, completely loved some parts of it, Seed as a magazine still has a few rough edges they need to smooth out. Just my observation and I will point out that I do love the magazine, wish it well, and forever curse the fact that it doesn’t come out too often. 🙂