Wowza

The New York Times is one of the last still-standing newspapers available. Now that our culture has embraced websites, RSS feeds, iPad apps, or, worse yet, paywalls (that are easily leapt), it appears as though the New York Times may be the last soldier standing in a battlefield peppered with bankrupt corpses.

The paper also has a great rep for being the source for news. The paper's reporters are keen, sharp and, if you're lucky, they're witty. They're also well-known for getting the best sources, the dudefaces who're closest to the news, finger on the pulse, all that blood-centric analogous language.

Well, they were.

May I draw your attention to the article "Bubbles of Energy Are Found in Galaxy."

First of all, fuck that headline. Christ that's awful. Bubbles? Of energy? What the hell are those?

"Hi, I'm energy!"

So I read on to find out ... and apparently no one knows. Sure, space n' shit—that's some spicy mysterious gumbo—but that's why we have, y'know, scientists. With their white lab coats and tortured, make-up wearing monkeys and lonesome spouses and horn-rimmed glasses—they're the men and women of exploration and, eventually, explanation.

But these bubbles of energy failed to elicit any kind of helpful response at all. Instead, the article has the funniest fucking pullquotes I've ever seen.

When the bubbles were discovered, Doug Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics offered a description:

"They're big."

...

That's it.

Then Dennis Overbye, the author of the article, uses a pop-culture reference:

The source of the bubbles is a mystery. One possibility is that they are fueled by a wave of star births and deaths at the center of the galaxy. Another option is a gigantic belch from the black hole known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way.

Yeah yeah, of course nerds are gonna read the science section of the times, and therefore are going to appreciate the Jabba shout-out, but really? I mean, that's journalism?

Gets better. Here's the Number One Best Quote of All Time:

"Wow."

David Spergel

This, coming from David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton, who, the article notes, was not involved in the work. So this is just some fucking guy who wandered into a room, probably twirling a pencil between his fingers, snapping on some gum, thinking about how to bust past his office's firewall to download porn, and was asked by Overbye, who is probably a friend, maybe even a circle-jerk buddy, to comment on a story he is in no way familiar with or related to, and he said, quite simply:

"Wow."

Yeah, wow is right. Wow to you, New York Times. Once again, you've raised the standard for journalism, set the bar at its height: so high it's melting in the sun (which, by the way, Overbye, is part of the universe, in case you're curious—maybe you could write that up in Part II of your Epic Quest to Understand Space).