The Last Word

LWON happens. There’s no stopping us! Here’s what we gave our dear readers last week: Women speaking to groups get interrupted. A lot. Rose wrote up some advice on how to make sure, in a radio interview, that your girly voice is heard. Helen has seen U2 in concert 12 times, though she’s never marked […]

Perspective, Perhaps

Last week, according to some real news, Earth got a wave hello from far away, from some-3-billion-year-old vibrations that were set off when two black holes smashed into each other. (Really? There’s not room for both of you up there?) According to the New York Times, the collision—reported by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which felt the signal—resulted in […]

Redux: Something About Sharks

Despite the occasional tragic outcome of such encounters—and they truly are occasional relative to attacks by other wild animals—I love meeting sharks in the wild. So, dive in with me as I recall this experience with Emma the tiger shark in the Bahamas. I don’t know that she was as intrigued with me as I was […]

The Last Word

What a diverse week of posts! Seriously, take a peek at these: You’ll love Helen’s artistic take on a scientific meeting about immunity. She sketched her experience rather than jotting notes, and it’s pretty great. Emma introduced us to a field you’ve never heard of, taphonomy, the study of the gritty transition of a human corpse, especially the […]

The Last Word

In the run-up to Mothers’ Day, we at LWON honored motherhood and, in some cases, the amazing women who gave us the gift of life. (Some of us might have preferred a new bike, but we got what we got.) It all started with Michelle getting to know the Perfectionist (purposeful capital P) in her daughter, a character […]

Motherhood Week: The End Can Be Like This

My mother was dying. It was time to get ready. First came the visit to a funeral home where we walked among the coffins as if shopping for a new couch. Deep woods polished shiny; insides pillowed, all velvets and ruffles; pallbearer handlebars in brass or chrome. But no, too fancy, and she’d be cremated anyway, […]

The Last Word

Here at LWON this first week of May, we wrote about stuff. Two guests helped fill our pages. Emma Marris pondered the constraints of urban parks and their tendency to tidy nature’s wildness away. And Ramin Skibba (who wins for having the coolest name) opined about the unprecedented March for Science, wondering if it could […]

Redux: Bees Are Us

This post about honeybees originally appeared May 2015 here on LWON. I still love bees and they’re still in trouble, so I figured I’d draw attention back to how amazing they are. So, here’s your big buzz for the day. Enjoy! ——– Early the other morning, I woke up to a strange humming noise. My […]