Good and bad things about science and technology?

What are some of science and technology blogs that put things in context?

• We have all read those science and tech blogs or news sites chanting about some "major breakthroughs" from time to time. However I think these sources do a poor job at explaining the how and where an individual event is related to overall research in a field. They often fail to tell lay people what questions have been and have not been answered, how are these discoveries competing with other similar discoveries, and what are the puzzles that need to be pieced together in order to achieve some higher-level goal. Any suggestion for some better contextualized science & tech sites?

• Answer:

  http://www.scientificamerican.com. Scientific American Magazine has been continuously published for a century and a half, and is one of the most prestigious general science magazines out there. I've found that they generally stick to the cutting edge of science/technology as seen by the consensus of working scientists within that field--as opposed to the golly gee whiz stuff. That is, Scientific American targets readers who are technical themselves and want to keep up with the current findings/consensus in other technical areas at a less techie level than within their own field. So it's about as technical as you could expect without getting into the math of the field. And I think they generally try to apply Edward Tufte's teachings about the visual presentation of quantitative material. I've subscribed for many years and like the Web site too. The New York Time's science page online is good as well.