It is the size of a child, pelting through the forest with great dexterity. Quadrupedal but galloping with synchronized fore and hind steps. My concern is not this gentle, slender creature — whose mass, velocity, volume and weight distribution are crystal clear in my mind — but rather the imagined force or creature that set […]
On September 30, the Rosetta orbiter will make a controlled collision with Comet 67P/C-G. It is not designed for landing, so this is the last we will hear from it. This date also marks an end to a happy period for my family that started in 2013 when my son was just four years old […]
On August 12th, a story entitled “The Death of the Bering Strait Theory” opened thus: “Two new studies have now, finally, put an end to the long-held theory that the Americas were populated by ancient peoples who walked across the Bering Strait land-bridge from Asia approximately 15,000 years ago.” The History Channel posted along the same lines: […]
This week was summer-themed and — with one fresh exception from Judith Mernit — recycled, in the most exciting sense of the word. This allowed us all to actually experience summer, in order to have more stories to share with you, dear Reader. In the summer of 2010, Heather spent eight-hour hiking days in the […]
This week as summer hits its balmy peak, we look back at LWON posts from summers gone by. Five years ago, Richard spent his summer vacation in Chile’s winter, getting to know the astronomers and donkeys of the Chilean mountainside. It’s classic Richard, basically, and the delight is in the details. Here it is.
LWON came out of its redux mode this week with a crop of fresh posts. A mourning dove laid an egg in Cameron’s house while she was away. The LWON commenters confirm it: mourning doves will lay their eggs anywhere and may need a little more attention from Mother Evolution. Craig returns to the Grand […]
It is Thing Appreciation Week at LWON, where we bring you the Greatest Hits of our previous posts about inanimate objects. Anne Sasso wrote this post in January of last year celebrating her pocket calculator, which has stood by her for 40 years while planned obsolescence ate all of her other devices — and their replacements. […]
June 6-10, 2016 Rose spends a month on in a ship in the North Sea, and finds herself engaging deeply with issues of scale. A prominent naturalist lives a quiet life in small-town Washington – amassing 150,000 specimens – and his neighbors have no idea who he is until after his death. “There ain’t nothing […]