This is not a complaint directed at the Google news services; rather, it serves as an example of something else that annoys the Czar.

Here is the latest top Sci/Tech stories from Google news. It should be different every few minutes, but no matter—day after day, hour after hour, the result is pretty much the same. And this is true of pretty much every news feed that has a Science and Technology section.

That is, of course, the number of “tech” articles vastly outweigh the “science” ones. There are some possible causes for this.

• There just are more technology break-throughs every hour than there are scientific discoveries. Possible, but this seems unlikely. Really, does news about a software patch for a third-rate phone platform matter more than recent news that some forms of depression might have a genetic component? Most of the technology articles are reviews of new phone apps, lists of must-have gadgets in 2011, and a review of gadget sales in 2010.
• The science news stories are not all that great. You might think so, given there is an item circulating that honeybees are disappearing—which was news in 2002. No, the science stories might stink, but that is because of what is being covered, and how they are being written. Okay, it is January—a time of year when journalists do even less work by compiling top ten lists. But did you know a previously unknown (and extinct) human speices was found in Eastern Europe that appears to have bred with both Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens? Or that a revolutionary new process exists to clean up contaminated nuclear sites? Or that neurologists, stymied by a lack of progress with Alzheimer’s, made a break-through discovery that they may have been confusing symptoms and causes? This is all pretty big news. Much more so, we believe, than some Blu-Ray remotes are now shipping with a Netflix button.
• Or, and you can guess this is the Czar’s preferred theory, that journalists just lack the depth of education to understand what are good scientific discoveries, but damn they love their new phones, with the cool Angry Birds app. And how awesomely sick is that iPad? Dude, you totally gotta download that Chrome update.

Because which ones require thought, analysis, and research, and which one just allows a 20-something J-school putz to write his opinion about a company press release? Sadly, if that sci-tech writer and his editor were in their 70s, they might be more interested in that Alzheimer’s story. As, one assumes, would be the growing majority of Americans.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.