IMS_Blog

The Uk based New Scientist weekly magazine is a pretty good general science mag aimed at the educated lay reader. It’s always worthwhile picking up if embarking on a train journey say—it normally has a good selection from various fields and articles aren’t too challenging—or if one of the cover stories catches the eye but it’s not exactly something I’m going to read every single week especially when I have all these internet feeds pouring in on a minutely (is that a word?) basis. Frankly though one of the best regular sections has always been what comes at the back. The Last Word is a reader driven question and answer column (dealing with the serious and not so serious topics) but better is Feedback, which is a page of strange, vaguely science related tales with a lot of reader interaction. Now the point was these back page items used to be freely available online, just like their breaking news is. Turns out that whilst the news still seems to be free, the backpage stuff now gives a brief preview followed by a subscribe link. Damn it. I like Feedback with an irrational attachment that probably goes back to days (shock horror) before the net. Now obviously this is their content and they can do what they like—locking this up might well sell a few more copies to us back page addicts—but it does seem a little mean.

Update: Seems this must have been a mistake. This week’s Feedback is freely up there as usual.