Sep 28 – Oct 2, 2015 Ok so Jennifer’s face looks a little older. Does anybody have a problem with that? Do babies? potential mates? Does natural selection? Anybody? No? Then screw it. New Person of LWON (oh joy!) Rose Eveleth got a new puppy. So cute. So energetic. So barky. So depressing. What can […]
Somewhere in the deep pits of my mind, I still think of “scientists” as remote people whose sentences I won’t understand, and of “science” as an incomprehensible body of knowledge I have to memorize. This is probably also the public’s image of science. But if 1000 years as a science writer have taught me nothing […]
I’d use this tactic on my nearest and dearest but it takes a certain emotional composure and psychological distance, and right when I should be doing killer obliviousness, I get irate and jump in with both feet and lose the argument entirely. I personally see this as a virtue. http://abstrusegoose.com/558
The two of us, my husband and I, took our breakfast toast, melon, and coffee out to the porch last Sunday morning, with late summer hanging on by its teeth. It was early, so the neighbors’ ACs were still off, and nobody was out yet. “It’s so quiet,” my husband said. Traffic out on Charles […]
Ann: Some time ago, I got interested in why European languages so often use the same word for “story” and “history.” Every English speaker knows that having one word for two such different things — fiction and truth, respectively — is anathema. But my thinking didn’t go much farther than that, it rarely does. So […]
August 17 – 21, 2015 It was a week of people changing their minds. Except for Cameron’s kids, they didn’t budge. Magical thinking works, says guest Heather Abel. For decades, she was able to stop tsunamis before they hit her. Now, though, the grand and calming ocean stops them for her. Even out in the […]
I may have stolen my neighbor’s tiny cherry tomatoes right off the vine. They were so glowingly red, so warm, how could I help myself? Maybe “stolen” is a little harsh because I didn’t have to go onto her property to get the tomatoes, we share-crop them in pots in my back driveway. And after […]
July 27 – 31, 2015 Christie’s dog continues to live life as stupidly as possible, this time involving a skunk; and Christie solves the problem with the power of science. This post is a public service. Guest Chris Arnade’s pond is drying up; he saves the life of a one-eyed spring peeper but those tadpoles […]