Science news

As a scientist some time ago I came to the realization that the vast majority of the world has no clue what is going on in the sciences. I can't really blame them either, there are so many new developments all the time it's hard for anyone to keep up. Hell, since my brother got me a subscription to New Scientist for Christmas I've been struggling to understand a wide variety of things, like what a boson is or trying to wrap my mind around the interpretations of the cosmic background radiation.

But that being said I think the media does a horrible job of presenting the sciences and advances therein to the general public. Just look at the news this past week, how many of you have heard of the discovery of kryptonite? I'm betting most, if not all of you can. Now this might be an important discovery; if it did what it did in the movies and if Superman's heat vision was causing global warming. But frankly it's not, it's the standard fluff news that is presented to the public because they can relate to it in some way...sadly in this case it's through a fictional character. Conversely have any of you heard of a method of genetic manipulation of mosquitoes being used to combat malaria? Somehow I think that that may just have a greater impact on humanity than the fact that the people making the Superman movies had a moderate understanding of chemistry theories.