…You are not alone.

“From my perspective as a conservative, I think science education is important… and I’m not religiously sympathetic to anti-evolutionists, who I think are lunatics.”
—Georgia State University Professor of Law L. Lynn Hogue, who has led the conservative Southeastern Legal Foundation, worked for the disbarment of President Clinton and has crafted legislation that would allow the display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings.

I lifted that, by the way, from the current (Feb/Mar 2006) issue of Seed. People keep asking me what I think of this newish (started last year, I think) pop-science magazine. Well, as a conservative, I mind its politics less than I expected to (trying to be nice here). It’s better than Scientific American, anyway. Look, there aren’t any science, or pop-science, magazines with a conservative editorial line. Fact of life. From that point of view, asking me about science mags is a bit like asking Jay Nordlinger to name his favorite rap group. The most one can hope for is an open attitude to solid science results that have anti-PC implications. In that respect, Seed is a couple of ticks better than SciAm, though not as open as the old Omni. (Or as the heavy-duty science mags like Science and Nature, which, with only occasional lapses, are very professional & impartial outside their editorial columns.)

Science-wise, Seed is pretty good. The balance of physical, human, & mathematical sciences is right. There’s good gossipy stuff (in this one, a column on the philandering habits of great 20th-century physicists, including the text–unprintable on a family website–of the fan message in Richard Feynman’s office). Layout is excellent, almost up to NR standard… There are little 200-word sidebars on topics of interest. (“Element of the month–Lithium…”), a comic strip, the nowadays-obligatory essay on science & religion (this issue’s, a pleasant & thoughtful non-rant from Daniel Dennett),… but no crossword. Are crosswords disappearing? Every magazine about anything used to have one.

This issue of Seed also has an article by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, who foolishly brought out a book about the Riemann Zeta function just at the time my own was sweeping the bestseller lists. He plays back the tremendous & serendipitous 1972 meeting between Hugh Montgomery & Freeman Dyson that I cover in chapter 18 of Prime Obsession, then tells us that there have been developments in the study of the moments of the zeta function (a topic I apologized, in my Introduction, for excluding–it had only just come to light)… But doesn’t tell us what they are, or what they might portend. Bit of a dud, this piece. And no, I’m not annoyed at his book coming out at the same time as mine, not at all.