R: Roger Select

A Special Investigative Report

As an attempt at investigative/consumer reporting, and because I'm bored, I've decided to sign up for the NYT's free 14-day trial of Times Select and see what readers are getting for their $7.95 per month. I've already put a big circle on the calendar for October 23, to remind myself to cancel before they run my credit card.

Here we go.

After confirming the purchase, I'm taken directly to "John Tierney's Book Club," though I didn't click on a Tierney link to begin with. Not a promising start.

Tierney's Book Club is actually a blog; the page is captioned "John Tierney's Web Journal." The idea of the NYT forcing Tierney to blog is amusing.

The first selection in Tierney's book club is "Radical Evolution" by Joel Garreau, which Tierney describes as being "packed with telekinetic monkeys, Schwarzenegger mice 'built like steers, with necks bigger than their heads,' a man who can send e-mail with his thoughts, vaccines that guard against acute pain for a month at a time, and memory and longevity pills." Oh, brave new world, that has such monkeys in it.

Tierney's most recent post, dated the 4th, is about genetic enhancements. No mention of Steve Sailer yet. Tierney asks: "Some of the possible tweaks we could make to our children's brains would be simple and temporary ­memory pills, or short-term pain vaccines. Others would be permanent and life-altering­ gene doping and brain implants. How far would you go with your own child? How far would you want to permit others to go with theirs?" These are rhetorical questions, apparently, since you can e-mail Tierney with your comments, but can't leave comments for others to read.

Tierney does share some hard hitting and thought-provoking e-mails, like the following:

"Your choice of 'Radical Evolution' as your first book club reading is an important and relevant one. As a retired science teacher, it greatly perturbs me that so many intelligent, well-educated people, many of whom are in positions of power and influence, have so little knowledge and understanding of science principles, and of how scientific investigation works. If we are to make informed choices as a concerned citizenry, we must be scientifically literate. Only in this way will we understand, and act wisely on, the choices before us."

Tierney's not afraid to court controversy.

Tierney's blog links are relatively safe, generally libertarians, real (Reason) and fake (Instapundit, SchmuckCentralStation), establishment wingnuts (Kaus and Sully) and snore inducing faux-public intellectuals (the Becker-Posner blog). No link to VDare. Cm'on, John, you know you want to.

That's about it. Five posts since September 22, two of which are comprised of reader e-mails, and a blog roll. It's like a DVD that counts the cover art and shrink wrap as extras.

I had better pace myself; this may not take all 13 days.

Tomorrow: Something else.