March 16-20, 2015 Cassie’s redux tells the story of Leroy, an HIV-positive former drug user who featured in her graduate thesis about Baltimore. Michelle converts the Science page of the New York Times into a St. Patrick’s Day miracle. It’s been a decade since polar bear cub Knut won the hearts of Berlin zoo visitors […]
Month: March 2015
Debunking Hollywood is LWON’s very occasional series that takes a hard science look at common TV and movie tropes. “Help!” The lifeguard straightens in his chair, craning his neck to find the citizen in peril. “Help!” Over there, by the barrier floats! The victim’s face is obscured by great splashes raised in her violent struggle for […]
I knew something was wrong the moment I opened the orchard gate. My guinea fowl were squawking like crazy, buckwheat!, buckwheat!, and none of my two dozen or so chickens were anywhere in sight. I scanned the area around the poultry barn for signs of a predator, but saw nothing. Until I reached the chicken […]
On December 6, 2005, a polar bear was born in captivity. His mother rejected him and his twin, and his twin died. The survivor was an adorable baby polar bear, but that phrase doesn’t need the initial adjective, does it? A baby polar bear is a little puffball, white with button eyes and perfect and […]
Dear friends! Forgive a change of form A deviation from the norm For on the feast of Saint Pat-rick A man who liked his Limerick We here present for all to see The science news from A to Z The facts from ‘cross the universe The Science Times, told in light verse Today above the […]
This was originally published 8/23/2011. More should have changed by now. This is a sort of permanent redux.Today is my birthday, a good time to reflect. And one of the things I have found myself brooding over lately is my love of Baltimore. As fans of The Wire know, the city has more than its […]
March 9-13, 2015 On Friday the 13th, Cassie told us the sad story of the people who died after taking a perfectly reasonable-seeming medicine, and what that means for the drugs we take today. Ann told us what today’s brilliant young astronomers are up to: crazy stuff, like figuring out a rule of thumb for […]
On September 27, 1937, Susie Mae DeLoach caught her leg on a strip of barbed wire. The wound festered, and the infection spread, eventually reaching her heart. None of the remedies DeLoach’s doctor recommended seemed to have any effect. And by the time her family called Dr. Johnston Peeples for a second opinion, she was gravely […]
