I’ve been reading a history book, this one on a subject with so little documentation it needs to rely on eyewitnesses remembering what happened 10, 30, 50 years before. Which, honest to God, why would you even bother? Science insists over and over and over, eyewitness testimony isn’t reliable – it’s influenced by stress, it […]
October 24 – 28, 2016 For signs of fall, you got your turning leaves, your pumpkin spice, your Halloween. But Helen’s got crocuses, flu shots, and delight. LWON is so happy that Emma Marris finally agreed to join it. She’s been watching wolves for a while now, and wonders what will happen now that someone’s […]
May I introduce James Gleick? He’s been on staff at the New York Times, and has written seven books, including Chaos and Genius (a biography of Richard Feynman), for which he’s won impressive prizes. And he’s just published Time Travel, which Joyce Carol Oates called “another of [his] superb, unclassifiable books.” It’s a compendium of […]
October 10 – 14, 2016 With the de-embargoing of Cuba, Cuban and American geologists can finally talk to each other. That’s a good thing, says guest Alex Witze, because Cuba is a crunched-up (and gorgeous) mess between a rock and an ocean. Michelle reminded us of Lady Ada Lovelace, an inventor of computer programming, who died […]
The People of LWON and their splendid guests have several ongoing preoccupations, and rather than have you try to mentally collate them over the years, we thought we’d devote a week to each preoccupation. That way they’ll all be in one place. I have a feeling this isn’t making much sense. However. This week is […]
September 19 – 23, 2016 You know the charming idea of effortless art, that you get in the mood and a couple hours later, you’ve magically got an incisive and elegant story or post or podcast? That idea always has been purest nonsense but it also, Rose says, gets in the way of being paid. You […]
I must tell you up front that Kathleen R. Walker, second author on “Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) Longevity and Differential Emergence of Dengue Fever in Two Cities in Sonora, Mexico,” published recently in the Journal of Medical Entomology, is my stepdaughter. She’s an entomologist, she studies bugs; I occasionally have a bug question. I asked […]
Across the street are two houses with two small yards, connected so they look like one, shaded by trees, one of which has a rope looped in it. The little kids come out of both houses, run through the shade into the dapple-spots of sunlight, disappear back into the shade, grab the rope and swing, […]
