Café Philos: an internet café

Hear ye! Here ye! Let it be known far and wide by this proclamation that, by the powers invested in me by Mahendra, I hereby tag Ed Yong and his most excellent "Not Exactly Rocket Science" with the Intellectual Blogger Award.

Ed describes his mission thus: "This blog is my small attempt to celebrate science and to make it interesting and fun, by giving jargon, confusion and elitism a solid beating with the stick of good writing."

The thing is, Ed lives up to that mission. Anyone who wants to see a mission statement turn into reality (as opposed to empty words) should visit Ed's blog for that reason alone. But there are other reasons too, besides his integrity, that I'm pleased to tag Ed's blog.

What Ed has done on "Not Exactly Rocket Science" is make genuine science accessible to people who do not hold an advanced degree in the fields he writes about. His articles not only lay out the conclusions of scientific papers, but also the reasoning behind the conclusions. And he often corrects mistakes made by the popular media in reporting science news.

Beyond that, Ed is a superb writer. He is a genius at clarity, a master of the apt phrase, and he is even downright witty. I've said this before, but Ed's writing is not mere reportage -- it's literature.

I strongly suspect Ed of being a genius in more ways than in his writing -- how else can any one person read, understand, and explain the findings of so many different branches of science?

Ed richly deserves the Intellectual Blogger Award, and it gives me immense pleasure to tag him with it.