August 25 – 29, 2014 The week began with a flight of fancy from Richard. Or was it his lived reality? Only YOU can know the truth. If you never saw a toy robot shape-shifting into a toy vehicle, you might think a movie called Transformers was about this. Cameron follows her nose up to […]
Month: August 2014
On September 3, the U.S. Wilderness Act turns 50 years old. The law’s call to protect places “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man” has always been poignant, and our enthusiasm for trammeling seems greater every year. So the Wilderness Act’s half-century mark has occasioned a great deal of handwringing. Does wilderness […]
My nose has been extra-sensitive lately. I can catch dog food at a hundred paces, both the kitchen and my still-diaper-wearing kids’ bedroom feel like odor minefields, and I have to walk along the lineup of barbecues at the nearby park with my shirt over my face. It’s a good thing I’m not an astronaut.
I’m pretty sure that a Transformers™ movie came out a few years back, and I’m dead certain that the neighborhood kids regularly call on me to admire their transformable Transformers™ toys. And I think a Transformers™ movie came out just recently but I don’t know anything about it. It’s probably all explosive and apocalyptic. I’m […]
Smokey Bear Celebrates 70th Birthday and Reminds Americans … “Only You Can Prevent Wildfires” — Ad Council press release, August 7, 2014 Why me? Why am I the only one who can prevent wildfires? Forest fires were burden enough. I’ve […]
August 18 – 22 We reduxed a post by our beloved ex-LWONian, Tom Hayden, about all the shiny new multiplexing gadgets he’s bought and broken. Turns out the old stupid crap technology? it never breaks, it always works, it stays your friend. Helen bought an ice cream maker as a present but the recipient of […]
Right now the ocean is glorious. In the evenings, even if the day hasn’t been too hot, you can throw yourself into the saltwater and float between the waves for a while without your teeth chattering. This is not normal.
About a year ago I sat in the Members’ Room at the Royal Society as Professor Judith Howard FRS, once a doctoral student of Dorothy Hodgkin’s, explained how crystallographers worked in the early days. She showed me how Dorothy would begin by calibrating the black circles in an X-ray diffraction pattern by eye, to begin […]
