It’s Sunday, so why don’t we look at what’s been in some of this week’s magazines?
The Economist and the New Statesman both had articles on Venezuela which came to surprisingly similar conclusions in some respects. Both magazines concluded Chávez’s treatment of the foreign oil companies drilling in Venezuela was reasonably justified. Odd that, given that New Statesman’s article was written by the highly left-wing John Pilger and The Economist is pretty much a standard-bearer for right-wing neo-liberal economics. I guess the one thing we can conclude is the oil companies had it coming.
New Statesman is an odd magazine that proves the rule that 90% of everything is rubbish. Apart from the Pilger piece, there were only a couple of stand-out pieces: new columnist Ziauddin Sardar’s look at Hizb ut-Tahrir; and Charlotte Raven’s review of Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? a book I suspect, despite my best attempts at sunniness and optimism, will be a must-have on my Christmas present list. Otherwise, pretty much everything in NS was as the book suggested. It’s the first time I’ve ever read it through, other than to skim bits in WH Smith, so I might try their trial offer (13 issues for £4.99) and see if it grows on me.
The ever-excellent Economist also had an intriguing article on language development, which raises as many questions, if not more, than it answers. The only thing more surprising was that New Scientist didn’t cover the study to perk up what was a relatively limp issue this week.
Last item of note this week was from The Guardian’s Bad Science, looking at why the BBC’s science coverage in the news is so embarrassingly bad. The particular story cited took my breath away in its science-fiction stupidity. How can they let this rubbish on the air?!
Oh well.