When Matt McCorkle was growing up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, his dad often listened to the automated broadcasts from the local NOAA weather station. “The soundscape of my childhood was that little weather robot,” McCorkle remembers. Now an audio engineer and sound designer, McCorkle has worked with musicians including John Legend and Laura Izibor, and was […]
Month: March 2018
Decision fatigue is real. Decision fatigue is the mental exhaustion and reduced willpower that comes from making many, many micro-calls every day. My modern American lifestyle, with its endless variety of choices, from a hundred kinds of yogurt at the grocery store to the more than 4,000 movies available on Netflix, breeds decision fatigue. But […]
Greetings, Folks! Here’s what’s on offer from this past week: I can’t tell you how much I love this post from Ann. It’s about a metaphor related to gravity, or, really, not-quite gravity, what she describes as “still grounded but hair stuck straight out about to lift off….” Nice! Then Rebecca takes us on a walk […]
Describing people, actual people you’ve sat across from and interviewed, can be really hard to do well. We writers keep trying, with mixed results. But it’s worth the effort. Here’s what I think: Especially in a tough science article, getting to know people—by way of a simple “tidy brown beard” (though I’d vote to use […]
This post first ran November 30, 2011. Last week, I fell in the Thames. I only fell in up to my thighs, but the gaping, bleeding puncture on my shin, inside which I could see geologic-looking layers of anatomy — that was a bad sign. So I found myself at the A&E (that’s ER to […]
In September 2000, the UN came up with eight Millenium Development Goals. Things like solving malaria and reducing infant mortality. Perhaps out of despair for the scale of these problems–but I fear out of something worse in me–I show no signs of dedicating my life to such noble goals. They’re more important than anything I’m doing, […]
I believe in a heaven for all dogdom where my dog waits for my arrival waving his fan-like tail in friendship. ~ Pablo Neruda When you land in Chile, the first thing you notice is the color of the sky. An easier thing to describe is the second thing you notice: The dogs. The country […]
A neighborhood kid, maybe 10 years old, doesn’t have the usual relationship with gravity. I know it’s her even when I can’t see her clearly by the way she moves through space: even when she’s not running, just walking, she looks like she might re-connect with the earth but also she might not. She reminds […]
