Articles by David Roberts
David Roberts was a staff writer for Grist. You can follow him on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing.
All Articles
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Slightly off topic but utterly essential
The Daily Show is a national treasure.
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Slate tricked into publishing a parody of its own reflexive contrarianism
In 1996, physics professor Alan Sokal submitted a paper to the postmodern culture studies journal Social Text. When it was published, Sokal revealed that the paper was an elaborate ruse, a parody, filled with the most absurd postmodernist tropes he could dream up. It became known as the Sokal Hoax.
Slate has just been the subject of what future historians will likely call the Pellettieri Hoax. Jill Hunter Pellettieri wrote an article lampooning Slate's penchant for vapid, picayune, deeply privileged, self-conscious contrarianism ... and tricked Slate into publishing it!
Well played, Pellettieri. Slate, you've been punk'd!
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Gore declines to debate Lomborg
I forgot to mention: the one "newsworthy" event at today's conference was the fact that Al Gore was directly confronted by Bjorn Lomborg and refused to debate him.