I’ve always had mixed feelings about tracking animals with satellite tags. It’s so cool that we can now see where creatures go, sometimes moment-by-moment, but I wonder about losing a bit of the mystery that surrounds some of their lives. (In the animal uprising, privacy issues may be high on their long list of injustices.) […]
Month: September 2016
This post first ran on May 21, 2013. I wish it would stop being relevant to the news. I recently witnessed one of the kindest, gentlest people I know fly into a momentary rage over a parking space. Such transformations used to baffle me, but after writing a Discover story about embodied cognition, I’m starting […]
A few weeks ago now I went to something called XOXO, a festival for independent artists. There are lots of recaps of this conference on the internet so I won’t try to add to that pile. But I did want to tie together two things I heard that I think are intrinsically related, and that […]
Editor’s note: We’re having trouble with comments. Because we approve them before publishing, we need to be notified when they come in. We are not being notified. We can’t seem to fix this. We have not given up, we never give up. Meanwhile, please be patient, please? September 12 – 16, 2016 Autumn is […]
Two weeks ago, tomatoes began splitting on the vine. Days of hard rain had left them dangling plump and heavy, and their cellophane skin couldn’t hold together. I wanted to harvest them. I tried on several occasions. But each foray into the backyard brought forth swarms of mosquitoes. By the time I reached the edge of […]
A recent email from a stranger posed a query as to what to do with Native American artifacts in her possession. I’ve never found the answer to be an easy one. The woman didn’t take much. She called it, “a small box of artifacts, a few really nice perfect arrows and a couple that where truly made […]
In this month’s issue of National Geographic, I tell a story of an ancient dynasty of Maya kings who made perhaps the region’s best attempt at creating what we might call an empire. It’s a twisting tale of political maneuvering and ambition unlike any other in the Pre-Columbian world. It’s actually kind of incredible that […]
Change is good. And today, here on LWON, I’m announcing a personal change. I’m coming out. As a vegetarian. Some of you may be surprised that I’m not one already. With my career focus on animals and conservation, and my adoration for all creatures great and small, it might seem wrong for me to eat […]
