Time for another visit from Bad Science Poet. Remember: “It’s not the science that’s bad—it’s the poetry!”™ A LESSON IN HUMILITY FOR SCIENTISTS Bunsen had a burner. Ike had Tina Turner. And which became president?
You’d think a wall panel in the Galileo gallery in the Galileo wing of the Galileo Museum would be a good place to get an accurate context for Galileo’s historical significance. You’d be wrong: “These astronomical discoveries heralded a revolution destined to demolish an image of the universe that had lasted for two thousand […]
September 8 – 12, 2014 The week began with a greatest hit from Cameron, a 2011 post that proved to be one of LWON’s most-visited—an ode to an astronomy professor who changed her mother’s life, Then came a new and no less viral post from Erik questioning the professional ethics of another academic, Henry Walton Jones, Jr., a professor of […]
Smokey Bear Celebrates 70th Birthday and Reminds Americans … “Only You Can Prevent Wildfires” — Ad Council press release, August 7, 2014 Why me? Why am I the only one who can prevent wildfires? Forest fires were burden enough. I’ve […]
June 30 – July 4, 2014 The bear in the trailer was bad enough. But the woodrat with the sometimes hard-as-concrete and sometimes soft-as-honey urinary deposits? Craig puts on his shower cap and starts scrubbing. Guest poster Gabriel Popkin visits spineless creatures in Washington, D.C. Feel free to insert your own punchline here. Erik’s wife says good riddance to the local […]
Early one evening a couple of weeks ago I was sitting on a bed in a hotel room in Aspen, laptop in lap, when I started hearing voices. I raised my head, listening closely. At first I assumed the voices were coming from the street, but then I saw that the windows were closed. I got up and […]
I was reading the end-of-semester student essays in the Science as Narrative course I teach when one phrase stopped me. Stopped me as in, I didn’t go on: “Darwin was happy to be tasked with telling a fire by its ashes.” Was it an actual thing, I wondered, this “telling a fire by its ashes”? I […]
May 19-23, 2014 You might think a week that begins with an essay about the chessboard and then another about White Alice would have a Lewis Carroll theme. You’d be wrong. Cameron puzzles over how the knight moves. Craig can see Russia from his muskox, sort of. Guest DeLene Beeland sings the postpartum blues. Speaking of beeland…is what […]