Bookraft

I used to consider Discover magazine like Psychology Today or CNN Headline News - getting creepingly close to infotainment or truthiness. Both trends blend fact and styling (read exaggeration or downright fiction)in a mix that is designed to amuse or entertain as much as inform. So I tended to approach Discover with in-built skepticism. Well I had it wrong.

Discover is in the business of popularizing Science. And it is a broad array of Science from Astronomy and Physics through Botany and Bioengineering to Science Applied in a broad range of emerging markets from electronics to mechanical enginering (this list is based on articles in the August through October 2006 issues of Discover) . So unlike Nature, Science, IEEE or even Scientific American - Discover is not primarily revealing unfolding Science or Engineering in dense published papers exposing the latest research or debates at Science and Engineering frontiers.

Rather Discover is highlighting or interpreting those results. The highlights are exactly that - headline like 2-4 paragraph distillations of interesting research in a broad range of sciences. For examples from the October 2006 issue there are the following Data stories:
Meet the New Continent - describes the rift in Northeast Africa near the Red Sea that will form a new Continent out of the Horn of Africa in a million years or less.
Oddities of the Outback - describes the weird animal life of Australia 10-20 millions years ago and the clues on how isolation and climate influenced evolution.
World's Smallest GPS - describes an ingenious experiment to show how Saharan desert ants navigate with internal pedometers.
Fuzzy Math .... Almost is Enough - is a flawed proof; 9x is not 9*x = 10x - x (see for yourself)
These data tidbits are drawn from real science and give a novel perspective on what is happening on the frontiers of engineering and science.

Discover's interpretation mission is evident with 3 types of stories. One might be called a summary piece that pulls together some of the latest research on a topic. Ultimate Mars from the October 2006 issue is a good example pulling NASA, European Space Union, and various astronomical observations into a telling description of Mars. The second is an interview with key scientists. The Discover Interview: Edward O. Wilson in the June 2006 issue provides a lively discussion of the trends in Darwinian biology and sociology. Finally there are "directions-of-science" pieces which look at not just the direction but also some of the practical, moral, and economic issues of fast developing science and engineering. Exploring the Outer limits of Knowledge in the October 2006 issue is just one such article.

And Discover is earning my attention and readership the hard way - newstand sales. Yes I can find issues at a smattering of libraries; but I am there only a limited amount of time. But whenever I visit a library or newstand, I am now looking for Discover as much as for the Economist, Foreign Affairs, Applied Arts or Scientific American. Not bad company.