The Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the aptly named Space Shuttle Discovery, 25 years ago this month. This past week (past month, past year) there have been gobs of events to mark the occasion: special talks, videos, a re-released IMAX movie, panel discussions, banquets, art exhibits, and a video contest. There was even an […]
Month: April 2015
About the same time I was laid off from my last magazine job, I found out that I’d gotten a gig in the Bering Sea. A photographer, Chris Linder, had a National Science Foundation grant to go on a series of voyages to very cold places and he needed a writer to go with him. […]
This is my last regular post for LWON. Thank you, readers, for indulging my ramblings about mushroom ice cream, eyeless crustaceans, and transit-chasing Frenchmen (not to mention my Canadian spelling habits). And thank you, fellow LaWONians, for letting me be part of your wonderful writing community. I’ll miss you guys. Lately, my dreams have been incredibly […]
Last month DC Science Comedy invited LWON’s own Mr. Cosmology to participate in one of the group’s Science Comedy Nights. Mr. Cosmology accepted. Empirical evidence follows.
April 20 – 24, 2015 Jennifer buys bespoke draperies with a beguiling floral pattern. In a flash of perceptual ambiguity, the flowers turn into baseballs, and now she can’t unsee them. Erik outlines best practices for your next Lucha Libre bout, and Cameron interviews a former co-worker who has just published a book all about […]
Before World War II, the Roman wedding ritual only blessed the bride’s ring. The male wedding band’s popularity didn’t take off until the 1950s, a combination of jewelry industry marketing and the growing association of masculine domesticity with national prosperity. Suddenly, men could be identified as single or ‘taken’ at a glance. Folklore has it that […]
I’m not the kind of girl who ordinarily irons her underwear. But two weeks ago I found myself hunched over a flimsy wooden board doing just that. I was visiting friends in Mozambique, and they assured me that everything must be ironed—shirts, pants, sheets, towels, and, yes, even underwear. It’s not about aesthetics. You need the […]
Today, I’d like to take a small diversion from oceans, placebos and other sciencey stuff to address something far more critical to our future here on Earth. Lucha Libre. That’s right, that crazy sport that inspired so much of American pro wrestling and has been shown by researchers to be 5.78 times more awesome. Since moving to […]
