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What can I put in my house today that will let my children discover science and physics the way Scientific American let me discover them as a teenager?

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I highly recommend the Scientific American Library book series. This is an out of print but readily available series in the used book market that is probably the greatest collection of scientific writing I've seen. I have been slowly collecting all of the entries, and for the ones that I've read, they are absolutely excellent. There are lots of pictures and the writing is at a level understandable by laymen but it does not dilute the technical aspects just to be palatable. The books I have read tell the real story. The authors are all fantastic and usually experts in their field, such as John Wheeler, Steven Weinberg, Peter Atkins, Julian Schwinger, Martin Rees, and others.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/181771-scientific-american-...

https://www.thriftbooks.com/series/scientific-american-libra...

The series reminds me of being a kid and taking home my granny's old encyclopedia set. I'll normally just grab one of the Scientific American Library books and peruse through it reading bits here and there.

For kids, I like some of the National Geographic books. They were a big part of my early nerding 40 years ago and they still seem to make some good books. The other big thing for me was an Encyclopedia Brittanica set, but I suppose that's ancient tech nowadays.

Speaking of National Geographic, I just let my subscription lapse and have no intention of renewing it. I used to love their longer articles but now they've just been getting less and less engrossing. Sometimes I wonder if it is me that has gotten depressed, and uninterested in reading them. But then I look at other aspects of my life and realize that no, its not me, its their content that has gotten depressing and uninteresting.

An ipad with archive access to the old scientific americans. I have one from the 1890s I got in an antique store and it's great.

That must have been one of the first iPads ever made!

IEEE Spectrum.

Second choice would be MIT Technology Review.

just have then watch codyslab and help them do their own experiments

Maybe skip the one where he inhales all the noble gasses.

Scientific American? Just because this post had issues with one article doesn’t invalidate the entire periodical.

Really? Because the fact that this article was published seems to showcase evidence for a systemic problem. How did this article get approved? I mean, it's linking to a study that makes racial and sexist judgements based off of ... general relativity?

Edit: I've read the full article and it is borderline incoherent. I have no idea what in the world she is talking about or how it even remotely relates to E.O. Wilson, much less why in the world they would post this mere days after his death. The article actually barely mentions Wilson other than slandering him in the sentences it does and provides no references to his work or anything that substantiates, well, anything the author is arguing for or against. Yet, the author takes the time to reference near lunacy.

The article ends with:

> The early work of Venter and Collins was foundational to my dissertation, which examined tumor markers of ovarian cancer. I spent time during my training at the NIH learning from these iconic clinicians and scholars and had occasion to meet and question both of them. As a person who uses science as one of many tools to understand the world, it is important to remain curious in our work. Creative minds should not be resistant to change when rigorous new data are presented. How we engage with old racist ideas is no exception.

What does that have to do with anything this article was supposably about? It makes no sense. Yet, someone (multiple people?) approved this article.

Not only was it simply published as an op-ed but Scientific American's editor-in-chief publicly praised this piece on Twitter, calling it insightful, and retweeted the author and another tweet praising it. So unfortunately we can expect Sci Am to continue on this downward trajectory.

As far as the veracity of Medium articles go, this is from the Wikipedia page describing Medium:

The platform is an example of social journalism, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications, or exclusive blogs or publishers on Medium,[3] and is regularly regarded as a blog host.

I tend to take things I read on that website with a grain of salt.

What does Medium have to do with anything I wrote?

Medium is where the piece we’re talking about was posted - “The Shameful Decline…”.

While the article in SA does seem appalling, I don’t see this single article’s publication as justification for this broad indictment of SA. It’s concerning, yes. But it’s ONE ARTICLE, and that’s all the piece talks about. OP may well be right, but they haven’t shown it by the citing of ONE ARTICLE.

I was not and am not commenting on the Medium article. I was referring to the Scientific American article.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-l...

For me, it's enough to think something is seriously wrong there at Scientific American. The more I think about it, the more the article makes little sense to me. I can't even understand what it has to do with E.O. Wilson. The timing of the article would imply that the article was written in just a couple of days by a recurring author. So they used the death of a notable scientist to push some agenda.

It’s common for a media company to have a file and even a pre-written obituary for famous people. That way there’s no need to cobble together an obituary hours after getting word that, say, Steve Jobs has died.

I take it that Scientific American didn’t have a pre-written obituary for E.O. Wilson.

If a scientific periodical had an article written by a flat earther that would be bad. If there was a torrent of criticism and the editor defended the article with vigour you would write off the entire periodical. The article discussed above is just as bad as flat earth, but with different polital valence.

Sure, although it sounds like there's been a pretty strong trend in this direction at SA for a while. The Scott Aaronson blog that people have linked from other places in this thread (https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202) says as much. Dr. Aaronson is an extremely even tempered and objective thinker. If he says there's an issue and goes so far as to guest publish a former writer sounding the alarm on SA, I'm inclined to believe there's a fire underneath this smoke.

Just because this post had issues with one article doesn’t invalidate the entire periodical.

In my estimation, it's become so shallow that i don't even bother following links to it from HN anymore. Whenever i see an entry in HN, i just move on.

For years and years, I used to be very excited every time SA arrived in my mailbox. But over time, it dumbed itself down, with great consistency, to the point that it's unbearable. I stopped subscribing long ago.

No, it really is that bad. I've been reading Scientific American for decades, I no longer do, it's gotten that bad.

I can even pinpoint when they passed the road of no return - it's when they mixed politics with science here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-... and https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-americ... here.

That was when I realized they didn't care about actual science, they cared about appearance.

The old scientific american would have never written an article intended to make people act a certain way by changing the name of things.

You can't really argue about backing anyone other than Trump, his presidency was a cess pool and almost ended the US as the oldest democracy in the world. They were just calling out fascism for what it is. There will always be a place for that in any magazine.

That just makes it even worse - why do they even bother backing his opponent in that case? Why do they feel a need to do this?

I [used to] read it for science, not politics.

Their blogs where they interview a mathematician are still good.

I highly recommend watching the new Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson. When it first came out I made a big production of it with my kids. They got to eat popcorn and drink soda while we all watched the series together.

They (and I) still look back on it fondly.

I would suggest passing on Neil deGrasse Tyson or at least taking a second look. His smugness alone is enough reason for me to not have anyone, especially kids, look up to him. Not to mention, he's often just flat out wrong. I personally cannot stand even seconds of hearing him speak, and I find him insufferable. It's his lack of humility that really gets to me.

The original Cosmos is still available, and it's quite good.

These videos may not be the best, but it shows a side of him that I find distasteful. He behaves the same way in every panel I’ve seen him in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwZXR2PlcEM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTItMy5EI2o

Does anybody else wonder at people who insist on using three names? Some actors do it, too, like Hayley Joel Osment and Brian Taylor Green. It just seems pretentious to me, like somebody insisting on using a title outside of their official duties.

Sometimes the media does it, which is a good thing for people with different middle names. Here are a few examples I thought of. Not good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy

LHO just seemed to call himself Lee Oswald, indeed the 3 names seem to be a media creation.

I was always under the impression that this is general practice with infamous people, to avoid mix-ups which might get the media outlet sued, however frivolously. But this may not be the case, including with Oswald, who apparently used his middle name sometimes.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughn...

Actors at least have a good excuse: there are various rules in the industry and/or unions requiring unique names (stage names, if necessary) for certain things.

Many people have multiple equal family names. Leaving one out would be as wrong as adding another. Names are never simple.

Usually such people acquire a nickname. A friend of mine's name was a triple name followed by III. Everybody just called him "Trey".

This kind of vitriol makes me sad at humanity

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