Posted on 09/07/2004 7:29:53 AM PDT by ZGuy
This is not your father's National Geographic any more. Once a coffee table staple with gorgeous photos of people, places and things, it now more resembles a host of other slick lobbying mags, pushing today's popular issues.
Last month's cover story was "fat." This month it's global warming, a subject that actually lends itself to quantitative fact-checking, of which National Geographic apparently did little.
I will start with the first misrepresentation of facts. When I get to this article's word limit, I'll still have 75 percent of them left. . . .
It begins with a picture of a flooded rice field in Bangladesh . . .
The first article starts with the melting of Sperry Glacier. . .
Next column: "The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80 percent since 1912." . ..
Two pages later, we read, "Human activity almost certainly drove most of the past century's warming." That's not true either.
Seven misleading statements in three pages. There are 28 more. When the truth gets this stretched, that's more than one person's work. Instead, it's a process, where scientists tell editors what they want to hear, editors don't check the facts and, ultimately, we all pay with very bad policies. Unfortunately, it's all predictable.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
The first time I remember they started this was when South Africa still had apartheid. They showed a picture of some black African gold miners working deep in the mines and titled it "eyes dulled with despair . . .".
Quite a few readers wrote in and told them to stop politicizing the one magazine that had stayed above the fray. They did for a while, but it looks like they slid back.
Like many others here, I haven't read them in years. The last one I remember was that knockout of an Afghan woman with the pale, trippy eyes.
I was a "valued subscriber since 1978" until about 2002. I realized I had quit reading 95% of the magazine years ago.
I don't put much stock in people who can only contribute personal insults without providing any substantiation to their baseless points.
You shouldn't have wasted your energy on that post.
Quite wrong you are. In the last ten years, I've been a freelance writer, a managing editor, and a publisher. I work with short-article newsletters every day. I know all about word counts.
This still seems like a feeble excuse for not making your point any better than this author does.
Without a doubt. It does seem odd to find a word that has a meaning that reflects both ends of the spectrum. It would be as if the meaning of 'black' were modified to mean 'white' as well.
I hate it when word meanings are changed to accomodate the bad habits of lazy speakers rather tan forcing the lazy speakers to modify their improper usage. It smacks of PC.
When I was real young, my uncle subscribed to Playboy and I found his collection. Took a couple and hid them in a big Kumquat tree in his backyard so that I could look at them when I was visiting.
Think south Florida, hurricane Betty(?), and my uncle wondering where all the pinups came from that decorated his fence the next day.
I noticed the slow but rapidly increasing descent from the theme Discovery and Science to enviro-weenieism. At that point, about 1997 when I had enough, I stopped sending subscriptions of Nat Geo for a Christmas gift and started sending NRA's "1st Freedom" instead.
My hubby cancelled his Sci. Am. subscription about five years ago when they stopped running the "Amateur Scientist" section. I haven't looked at a Nat. Geo. for, for, for, I can't even remember how long.
Good one.
Another favorite of mine is "chomping at the bit" instead of the correct "champing at the bit". And of course there's the "row to hoe" bit.
Keep 'em coming, friends and neighbors. Here's your opportunity to honor that stodgy old English teacher of fifty years ago.
Dear Lord!................
When did this happen? Must have been since I drove around the main valley in May, along with thousands of other visitors. The main atmospheric pollution I saw was from controlled burns down the valley. Made for some smoky photos.
I have no love for the Green Pol Pots, BTW, and long ago dropped my subscription to the yellow magazine for the same sorts of reasons posted in the lead article of this thread
Reminds me of how People magazine declined. They used to be about everyday, regular people, now it's just another celebrity-tabloid rag.
Quite wrong you are. In the last ten years, I've been a freelance writer, a managing editor, and a publisher. I work with short-article newsletters every day. I know all about word counts. This still seems like a feeble excuse for not making your point any better than this author does.
Looks like you and I are in the same business, except I've got ten years on you; newspapers and mags, not newsletters, have been my main means of support. If you had 800 words in which to rebut 23 complex arguments, how would you do it? This guy selected three examples; his readers know they can easily find the rest by referring to the original NG story. How would you have made the point ïn a better way? No feeble excuses, now!!
This is heading toward pettiness and I'm not going to contribute.
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