Joseph K. Pickrell has a provocative post over at Genomes Unzipped, Why publish science in peer-reviewed journals?:
The recent announcement of a new journal sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust generated a bit of discussion about the issues in the scientific publishing process it is designed to address—arbitrary editorial decisions, slow and unhelpful peer review, and so on. Left unanswered, however, is a more fundamental question: why do we publish scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals to begin with? What value does the existence of these journals add? In this post, I will argue that cutting journals out of scientific publishing to a large extent would be unconditionally a good thing, and that the only thing keeping this from happening is the absence of a “killer app”.
[emphasis in the original]
This reminds of the discussion between Melody Dye and Jason Goldman on bloggingheads.tv. After reading Mr. Pickrell’s case, and generally slouching toward a more “open science” stance overall since that diavlog, I think I am now moving toward Melody’s position of “end it,” rather than Jason’s position of “mend it.”
The action in the Genomes Unzipped post is ...
Screenshot of Civilization IV, a later version
Transcript of President Obama's Call to the International Space Station (with video)
Keith's note: 5 day's advanced notice - over a weekend. Too bad NASA hasn't a clue how to plan these things - they had more than a thousand media at KSC just last week and more showing up fo rthe landing. A simple handout could have enhanced visibility for this program immensely. Its hard to play "capture the flag" when you don't let people know where the flag is ... at least they are webcasting it.
Keith's note: On Friday President Obama will call the crews of the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station from the Oval Office starting at 12:29 pm EDT. 
Keith's note: Yes, NASA KSC actually did a full-blown failure analysis of an old piece of office furniture that broke. That's right - an old office chair broke (surprise) and the rocket scientists descended upon it as if it were a Mishap Investigation Board - like the kind that you set up after a rocket blows up. Included in this analysis were detailed SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) and stereo microscopic imagery analysis. I would be willing to bet that the cost of this analysis certainly exceeded the cost of simply replacing the broken chair and that it vastly exceeded the actual value of the 17 year old chair itself. You hear people defending the way that NASA operates and then something like this shows up. You have to wonder if there is any common sense in the management manuals they use these days. I wonder if KSC PAO can dig up the actual cost of this CFA (Chair Failure Analysis). 
