There’s great dignity in the mourning dove. Rarely does one demand attention. A pair’s gentle cooing is a pleasure, the whisper of parents trying not to wake the baby. The whir of their wings in flight (called sonation) recalls a wind-up toy. A couple of them, in velvety gray-brown with daubs of black low on […]
Month: August 2017
August 7-11, 2017 Ann has a hilarious exchange with Adam Rogers about ways in which we might strengthen the rigour of the social sciences, whose questionnaire-based conclusions Ann could shoot down “with a bow and arrow riding a fast horse in a high wind.” Those IPCC reports that represent the scientific consensus on climate change […]
The iPad on my brother’s lap shows our plane as an icon moving across the landscape. Through our headsets, my brother explains that the circle surrounding the plane on the map represents our gliding range. Anything outside that circle would be too far for the single-engine Mooney to reach if all went suddenly silent. So […]
There’s an unclaimed patch of ground right next to our driveway, the planting strip between the sidewalk and the street. Over the years it’s been filled with many things. Weeds, mostly. Orange poppies. Maroon-colored amaranth that toss confetti seeds across the sidewalk. Weeds, again. This year, my husband and our youngest son planted sunflowers in […]
“Wisconsin Company Offers To Implant Chips In Its Employees.” This was the first headline I saw about 32M’s employee RFID program, and it’s relatively chill, as headlines go. But I already knew that I’d be getting emails soon. You see, I make a podcast about the future that often talks about body modification. And also, reader, […]
This post ran originally in November of 2014, about excavating the desk of a prominent ice researcher at a small camp in Greenland. The researcher, Konrad Steffen, appears alongside Al Gore in the film and book “An Inconvenient Sequel,” which just released. With record high temperatures sweeping the country, enjoy some ice and snow. Earlier […]
Ann: Please meet Adam Rogers. He wrote a story about DARPA looking for solutions to the credibility problems of social science, only what I’m calling “solutions to credibility problems,” he called bullshit detection. First, social science’s credibility problems. Here’s the way I said it in 2015: Start with any question involving human behavior or motivation and […]
July 31 – August 4, 2017 Jessa’s on a trip that’s so far out in the back of beyond that it needs a guide. The guide doesn’t show. But nobody quits. Michelle finds a splendid metaphor for surviving ridiculously unpleasant situations: imitate the reindeer and assume Arctic resignation. I redux the struggles that Helen and […]
