The Last Word

August 27 -31 This week, guest poster Anne Casselman reported on a fascinating group of new experiments that indicate that a real solution to climate change won’t come from engineering better biofuels as much as it will come from engineering better ways to exploit our own psychological trap doors. After all, social pressure is our […]

The Last Word

August 20 – 24 This week, Cassandra opened up a big, foamy can of whoop-ass all over the people who uncritically told you eggs were as bad for you as cigarettes. Cameron told us why we may get more motion sick as we get older. Ann presented an open and shut case for why you […]

The Last Word

August 13 – 17 In his second guest post, Erik Vance tells us that, with regard to end-of-the-world prophecies, we’re doing it wrong. Christie wonders how sincere repentant dopers really are. Abstruse Goose considers the success rate of astrobiology. Guest poster Nicholas Sunzeff wonders if cosmology is a meaningful endeavour in a world filled with […]

Scissor Sisters

I suppose you were expecting a penis? Today you’re not getting one. Let’s talk instead about Cnemidophorous uniparens, an amazon tribe of Whiptail lizard that consists only of females. Having lost all its males, it now reproduces asexually. Well, kind of. A female’s eggs begin to divide after she gets it on with another female.

The Last Word

August 6 – 10 This week, Cameron channels Derek Zoolander in an epic complaint about turning left. And I know we’re all about Curiosity now, but Tom’s interview with Mars rover pilot Scott Maxwell made me get a little weepy about poor old Spirit once again. Heather wonders if archaeologists should dispense with field season. […]

The Last Word

July 30 – August 3 I was wrong. It looks like you can expect a penis every Friday, thanks to the wild popularity of LWON’s Penis Fridays. This week, guest poster Erik Vance tackled dolphin penises. No, he didn’t. But he explained them to us. Ginny and Michelle reopened the case of whether it’s ever […]

The Last Word

July 23 – 27 Penis Friday got violent this week with Brooke Borel‘s guest post about the bedbug penis, whose shape makes me freeze in terror. They use this thing to engage in what researchers call “traumatic insemination“. Aw, and bedbugs used to be so cute, too. Speaking of dicks, turns out Walt Whitman was […]

The Last Word

July 9 – 13 On this week’s episode of Galapagos Monday, Ginny explained how conservation biologists tried to make a gigolo out of a 60-year-old virgin. Michelle explained Tianamen Sid. Abstruse Goose raged against the assault of jargon. Christie told us about the two kinds of thinking it takes to do science And TGIPF continued […]