It’s something that some orb spiders do, a web embellishment whose purpose is debated. It’s called a stabilimentum, and arty spiders named Shea or Absinthe (Charlotte is just too on the nose) spin it out aciniform silk — different material than they use for the surrounding web. Typically its done in concentric circles or an […]
Month: November 2021
Some things I seem to write about over and over, year after year, far into the night. One of these things is the situation of women in science, usually physics and/or astronomy. The subject bores me until I start thinking about it, and then I get sort of irate. Enraged actually. Well, flame-throwingly furious. The […]
fog \’fog, fäg\ n : vapor condensed to fine particles of water suspended in the lower atmosphere that differs from cloud only in being near the ground ; a state of bewilderment ; something that confuses or obscures suspend \ sə-‘spend \ vb 1 : to keep fixed or lost (as in wonder or contemplation) […]
I was bitten the other night. I would have taken a picture of the turgid, blood-filled bug that stuck its rostrum inside of me for a liberal helping of hemoglobin, but my girlfriend smashed it with a rock and spattered the thing while I cheered her on. It was hard to resist the killing. Normally, I try and treat other […]
I love to count, and as a student of ecology I have counted many things over the years: sandpipers, whales, ducks, deer mice, penguins, internodes on eelgrass rhizomes, to name just a few. In part I love counting’s essential mundanity. It is so central to any ecological question, but my god can it be boring. […]
