May 16-20, 2016 In the hierarchy of correspondence forms, nothing beats a physical letter, writes Christie, particularly for their superior ability to be stumbled upon. Cassie threw up her hands in despair about climate change – and her intractable fatalism about it – and LWON’s trusty commenters took the ball and ran with it. Wherever […]
April 25-29, 2016 This week, Veronique Greenwood’s glancing knowledge of Mandarin becomes a daunting challenge, spurred on by some tentative communicative exchanges in China. Some argue that Shakespeare couldn’t have written some of his plays because the author of the plays knew too much. There’s another explanation: Perhaps he acted like a journalist. Helen bore […]
April 11-15, 2016 Guest poster Liza Gross details the struggles of traditional societies within the United States to hold onto their cultures in the face of ongoing settler aggression. Helen used to have a messy desk. Did it mean she was badly behaved or more creative? Now she has a clean desk. Does that mean she’s the […]
This week the Last Word on Nothing, usually riffing on the theme of science, marked a week where we talked about anything but. Guest Judith Lewis Mernit traces Easter traditions to their odd combination of origins in a dead man risen and a fertility goddess. Rose spends her leisure hours in vicarious bladesmithing competitions. Followed […]
Last Tuesday, I finally finished sorting out two years’ worth of tax returns, stubbornly eschewing the accounting industry even as my receipts and special forms multiplied to fill the desk. I sealed the envelope then turned and opened up the Number 9 door on my Quentin Blake advent calendar. The main illustration itself, adorned with […]
March 14-18, 2016 This week at LWON we ask five pressing questions: Sprickets, cave crickets, roach spiders, camel crickets. No matter what you call them, they are a form of hunched, evil popcorn that will leap toward you. We build them basements, they sproing in our faces. How is that adaptive? Interest in science seems […]
They have us singing O Canada! – but it fails to produce the effect of a rousing round of The Star-Spangled Banner in Yankee Stadium. Far from riled up, we feel like children at school again, trying to remember how the French bits go. Then the rocks hit the ice. It is the world’s premier curling […]
February 29 – March 4, 2016 This week, Helen and her friends became famous using nothing but some marshmallows and an idea. Here’s the blow-by-blow of her brush with celebrity. Craig reports from the Bering Strait where, as ever, he walks in two overlaid landscapes, separated by thousands of years. Rose has a fantasy life in […]