The Hubble Fellows are — forgive me — young stars: young PhD astronomers granted the money to go to whatever astronomy-doing place they want to go to and do whatever astronomy they want to do. And once a year, the Hubble Fellows give public talks about what they’re up to, so any astronomy writer with […]
Month: March 2015
For all those who suffered through my impossibly obscure quiz questions a fortnight ago, my heartfelt thanks. 120 readers sat the quiz to the end, and the average grade of 44% is no disservice to your knowledge level. There is one question in particular, though, whose most popular response surprises me. A remipede is a […]
When my husband finished grad school in 2006, we spent a lot of time talking about where we should go next. We knew we wanted to leave the college town in Oregon where we’d lived for the last few years. Should we head to the Cascades, move north along the Willamette River, or go south and west, […]
Some things never change. And sometimes the things that never change still somehow change for the worse. This post originally ran on January 5, 2011—an anti-science era that now seems almost quaint. Those were the days! I blame David Letterman. Less than a month before the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, one of the guests on his show was the governor of Texas, George W. Bush. […]
March 2 – 6, 2015 “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe hidden in laboratories and in front of chalkboards around the world there are scores of undiscovered hot, charismatic scientists hiding from the spotlight,” says Erik. “We need these people. Because God knows the pseudoscience nut jobs will take them if we don’t.” Abstruse Goose gets snippy […]
I am on the record as loving snow and cheerfully tolerating cold. So you’d think I would love winter. And I do, mostly. But as of this week, I am very much ready for winter to pack up its bags and leave the D.C. area. The reason: ice. Ice is the worst. Ok, it’s good […]
When you’re carrying a child, you make certain sacrifices. I knew I’d have to give up Tanqueray and the occasional guilty cigarette. I was even prepared to forgo sushi. But I soon learned that the list was far longer than I imagined. No hot tubs, the experts advised. No queso fresco. No Advil. No deli meat. […]
The nature writer Robert Macfarlane is so skilled—so precise, so observant—that he can make an unsuspecting reader long for mudflats. This careful selector of words is also a collector of them: Macfarlane has just published a lovely essay (and a book) about his hoard of “place words,” terms gathered over years of travel in Britain […]
