Oops

Decided to google "science buzz", and what do I find? A whole page of entries of folk who got there before me, including the US-based National Science Foundation. Indeed, their whatsit underneath reads "Dig deeper into science headlines", which was exactly my concept for this site - I was just struggling for the right words you realize. ;-)

Well, let's be philosophical about such things. After all, didn't Newton and Leibniz both stumble on the idea of calculus while sunning themselves in their respective back gardens, albeit a few hundred miles apart, with or without windfall-dropping apple trees to concentrate the mind?

What matters at the end of the day, say the peacemakers, is the idea, not who discovered it. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they, bunch of boring old peacemaking farts, boring being their raison d'être ? Effing morons - they just just don't understand the nature of the game. It's about fame, glory, being acknowledged as "brain of the century", indeed the millennium - that's 10 raised to the power of three years in case you didn't know - recognized with one's tomb parked in Westminster Abbey alongside that of King Whatsisname- you know, the one who 'ad-something 'orrible done to 'im- , with gawping tourists saying " 'E was the world's greatest ever scientist, y'know. They say he 'ad his best idea when an' apple dropped on 'is bleedin' head"...

Another monument stands in tribute, attached to the wall of the covered "Isaac Newton Shopping Centre "in Grantham, Lincs, now better known as the birthplace of the Iron Lady. It's a giant painted jigsaw cut-out from plywood or similar of a rosy-red apple. Bless...

Hello

Some people keep a old boot handy when watching TV - or is that a cartoonist's creation? Irrespective, I feel the need for a virtual old boot when perusing the media's handling of science. Think of this new blog on the block as that "old boot", but don't be surprised if some constructive comments creep in from time to time, or even new, highly questionable, indeed suspect hypotheses. What is science if it's not sticking one's head above the parapet?

Never is my spectator ire more keenly felt when there's no facility for readers to post responses, or when one's gems of wisdom/vitriol/jaundice fester unpublished in the moderator's in-tray during three-hour lunch breaks, or fail to appear at all.

Think of this, then, is a talking-shop for making sense - or nonsense- of the science we read on the main sites. The ones I track on a regular basis are the BBC, the Telegraph, The Times, The Independent and the Guardian. Yep, up-market anglocentric, I grant you, (do I hear groans) and I've no time for the dumbed-down underbelly. But I'll broaden my sweep if folk can suggest some wider reading which, in estate agents' argot "repays closer inspection".