Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Physics Gets No Respect

Kind of a belated gripe, but something I was reminded of today that I forgot to blog when I first noticed it. I griped last year about the fomulaic nature of the "Best Science Writing" anthology, but I had no idea that the 2008 version would be worse.

OK, I haven't read it, but I leafed through it in the store, and there's not a chance that I would squander beer money on it: there isn't a single piece about physics in it. Not one of the 19 articles highlighted by special guest editor Sylvia Nasar is about physics. Or astronomy. Or geology. Or, really, anything that wasn't essentially biomedical.

This, in a year when there were approximately six million articles written about the turn-on of the LHC. I find it hard to believe that there was nothing of note written about the physical sciences.