Customer Reviews
SORRY THIS IS NO WIRED, DISCOVERY, OR POP SCI 
2005-12-08
All of the above mentioned magazines have something in common. Great pictures and excitement. Most of the time a magazine is a magazine because it has great graphica AND artivles. This magazine seems to be written for PhD professors at Harvard. Yes it is pretty deep reading. Even this would not be so bad if the articles were exciting. The above listed magazine make science exciting because they don't just report the info, they make you feel like the news is exciting and important to you. THis magazine just reports the info. Blah blah blah. I could get this info this dry in a scientific journal. At least there I know it is going to be boring. Here I think I am getting a great exciting science magazine only to discover ... Nope. Good luck with this one lasting through the year long subscription.
Uh...guys, we live in 4 D?! 
2005-11-01
Is this a mistake? By the fact that the cover shows Chris Mooney is contributing an article I can assume this is a magazine that supports the broadly accepted and widely researched cannons of modern science. Mooney is prolific, level headed and a progressive from what I have seen.
But we live in 4 dimensions, not the three listed in the cover story. Yup, space AND time (though some troglodites might suggest that space and time are really 2 dimensions).
Seriously, you can't make a mistake like that, especially in a maiden effort, and expect to be taken seriously. Sheesh!
Stunning, Unusual, and Highly Entertaining 
2007-09-19
My biggest complaint with this magazine is that it doesn't come often enough. While yes, certainly catered to a more scientifically aware, intelligent crowd, SEED by no means approaches the drudgery of a scientific journal. In each issues is even a thick, tear-out "cribsheet" on basic scientific issues or concepts from global warming and photosynthesis to string theory.
One of the defining characteristics of this magazine that make it so enjoyable is the visual content. Just as much as what's embodied in its articles, these full page photo essay spreads from places like Antarctica or the Nobel prize ceremony offer a rare, beautiful glimpse at those who are working for progress and innovation.
I would even go so far as to call the magazine elegant. The little touches put into these issues augment my enjoyment almost as much as the content itself. In most magazines, popular or scientific, the line between ad or article is slyly blurred. While SEED would still most likely fall into the aforementioned category, I don't find myself annoyed flipping through these thick, glossy pages. Rather, these full paged picture essays, scientific meanderings, and editorials blend seamlessly together into a much more sophisticated ad set.
Topping my list of favorite magazines, SEED is highly recommended.
"Science is Culture" 
2007-07-02
So says the magazine's subtitle. Well, of course. Being bold enough to come out and say so is different, though, in a world where marketing is considered a creative profession and engineering isn't.
This isn't a technical journal. I get "Science" magazine and read it avidly every week, plus a drift of professional magazines and transactions. Seed is something different. It's for the geek who'd rather see a picture of a Nobel winner than of Paris Hilton. (Can you imagine meeting all 295 living Nobelists? This photojournalist did. I'm jealous.) It's for someone who cares as much about what robots should do as what they could do. It's for someone who's willing to learn about urbanization by studying power laws in mammal metabolic rates. It's about science as a political tool and politics as a subject of scientific study. There's even a guided tour of a grad student's bookshelf - if you've never seen a prime example, you'll be amazed at just how deeply personal a cubic meter or two over someone's desk can be.
Being a true geek never ends. Yes we work in physics (crunchy), chemistry (smelly), or biology (squishy), but we never leave all of our work behind. Our loves, our arts, our literature, our gaze into a starry night or into a rainbow all have something more in them because we see the science inside. It's like living in a world with a whole extra color. It's like living in Indra's Net, where every jewel reflects every other, including all the reflections. Seed is for us - geeks not just in the world of geeks, but in the world at large.
You'll get your facts somewhere else, but come back here for opinions, ideas, and a little memetic recombination. The level assumes a high-school-plus general knowledge of the "hard" fields (all of them), doesn't talk down, and doesn't get lost in the gee-whiz. I'm not sure they have the recipe quite right yet, but it's a worthy effort anyway.
-- wiredweird
Seed 2007-05-09
Seed sent a promotional subscription to my work. I enjoyed it so much that i ordered it for myself. I enjoy it and only wish it came out more often!
Great pictures! 2007-01-18
I feel like a college grad just having these magazines on our coffee table! When the neighboors or people we want to impress come over, we lay these magazines out, switch the radio to NPR, hide the TV Guide and put on clean sweaters.
The pictures are amazing! The close-up shots are really colorful and it's hard to figure out what kind of plants these seeds came from. If Seed printed 12 issues a year insead of only 6, it would deserve a full 5 stars.
Off to a great start! 2006-12-24
For anyone interested in all things scientific these days, we realize that it is becoming nearly impossible to dissect the science from the culture from which it is borne. This is the first time that I have seen an attempt to reconcile the two for a general market; science without a cultural content is equal to the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it fall. Did it happen? A resounding "yes." Was it registered, and therefore informative? A resounding "no." Tremendous kudos must go to the Seed editors for realizing the need to bridge the gap between WHO scientists are, and WHAT scientists are doing. Bringing in E. O. Wilson and his ideas of consilience was an early coup d'etat for the magazine- there is no one in the field more qualified than he to show the interconnectedness of science and culture.
Despite concerns voiced by other reviewers, the information presented is not for those at a Harvard post-doc reading level, nor is it exquisitely boring. This journal provides highly accessible information for anyone interested in the subjects at hand, and does so in a way that only makes one want a longer, more involved article. Seed shall be my science review magazine of choice, until it has been replaced by a publication even smarter and sexier than itself.
