Nature's 10
December 23, 2011 6:12 AM   Subscribe

 
Is this what Metafilter is gonna be for the next 2 weeks, just a collection of top whatever of 2011 lists?
posted by dave78981 at 6:34 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


Hundreds of years from now, says Sara Seager, “people will look back at us, and they won't remember me or you. They'll remember us as the generation of people who first found the Earth-like worlds”.


What an awesome statement, in it's optimism, it's potential impact, it's foresight, right or wrong. This is the first sentence of what you feel pretty certain is going to be a really good book.
posted by From Bklyn at 6:38 AM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]


I bet the chaps who invented the killer ferret flu are on the list for next year, assuming people are still alive to make or read lists.
posted by Renoroc at 7:16 AM on December 23, 2011 [2 favorites]


I actually learned something about different fields' of of science's intersection with society from this (non-banal!) list, that I wouldn't have otherwise. It's almost as if the posting of this link was some kind of....filter?
posted by lalochezia at 7:27 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


Who's excited for my upcoming Jan 1st "Metafilter's Top 10 December 2011 'Top 10 of 2011' Posts" post?
posted by nathancaswell at 8:03 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


I just gave myself a nosebleed figuring out how to format and punctuate that
posted by nathancaswell at 8:04 AM on December 23, 2011 [4 favorites]


I like how they included items on the "down" side of science — the guy who faked the psych data ('bright thrusting young stars' of the field? 'thrusting'????), and the woman who's replicating the 'arsenic life' experiments.

Plus "Sara Seager, Planet seeker" has a certain poetry to it.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:22 AM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


Is this what Metafilter is gonna be for the next 2 weeks, just a collection of top whatever of 2011 lists?

dave78981, if they're all of this quality, I'd be OK with that.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:29 AM on December 23, 2011 [6 favorites]


I'm just happy they went with one of the Arsenic-DNA critics, and not with Wolfe-Simon.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 8:35 AM on December 23, 2011


I've already seen several "Top Ten Top Ten List Lists"; maybe this year we'll be able to have a "Top Ten Top Ten Top Ten List List List". It's turtles with blogs all the way down.

And, as a paid researcher for "The Second Book of Lists" way back in the early '80s, I'd like to personally apologize for any role I had in the embryonic stages of this pandemic of lists. Ah, the days of the Wallechinskys and Casey Kasem's Top 40 and David Letterman's first "Top Ten List of Numbers From One to Ten". It was so much simpler then.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:38 AM on December 23, 2011 [5 favorites]


Re: Rosie Redfield: How can we get more elders with anime hair?
posted by serif at 1:15 PM on December 23, 2011


How can we get more elders with anime hair?

Just wait. It'll be you sooner than you would imagine.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:38 PM on December 23, 2011


Yes, there are an awful lot of top ten lists.

This, however, is a really worthwhile one, that we should be discussing more.

I thought the Rosie Redfield story was a great one that had slipped under my radar. I'd heard about the arsenic incorporated into DNA thing, but not about the role blogging and social media played in the review of the findings. I'm really hoping that more of this sort of thing happens -- sometimes it seems that academia is stuck in the dark ages when it comes to peer review, while the rest of the world is moving on quickly.
posted by peacheater at 4:11 PM on December 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


Danica May Comacho - child of the times and great-great-great-grandmother of future legendary U.S. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:25 PM on December 24, 2011


« Older ...oh yes, I have Tourette's Syndrome.   |   Escape from austerity Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments