Seed

For the big gift-exhanging holiday of December, my brother gave* me a subscription to Seed magazine, along with a copy of the current (November 2006) edition. The seed media group is the same group that puts out ScienceBlogs—a brilliant move, by the way, as I had kind-of-sort-of heard of them before ScienceBlogs, but now there is that instant name recognition. The magazine itself is really pretty: large shiny pages with gorgeous high resolution pictures and interesting layouts. I have only flipped through the magazine a few times, but so far it seems to be couched at a level that, while not too technical, doesn't "dumb things down" like many other popular science magazines tend to do. They are also quite clearly unafraid of tackling issues of science and culture; indeed, their slogan is "Science is Culture."

There was one article I really liked as I was flipping through the November edition, looking at pretty pictures. It's on page 31, and the title is: From Shanghai to Stockholm, A new program attempts to fast-track China's quest for science gold. I wasn't even going to bother reading the article (perusing for pretty pictures, remember?) until the three little letters "RSI" jumped up at me. Yes, it's a short article about the RSI-Fudan program I was a staff member at for two weeks this summer. If I have been able to determine on a personal level what the role of RSI should be in improving education in China, I have certainly not yet been able to verbalize it. Regardless, it's always entertaining to open up a magazine and unexpectedly see someone quoted on a topic I discussed with her just last weekend ...


* Standing in front of the magazine rack and mentioning, 'I wouldn't mind having a subscription to this magazine, myself,' helped in this decision.