July 2 – 6 This week, Tom wondered why one of the greatest mental capacities our outrageously successful species possesses hardly works at all. Faced with parenting in a region “where a high school diploma confers a solid elementary school education”, Jessa weighed her home schooling options and whether they could guarantee a prodigy. Cassie’s […]
In 2010, an epidemiologist was asked by a California school to investigate its high levels of dangerous dirty electricity. When he arrived to take readings, he found that some classrooms contained levels of electrical pollution so intense that they exceeded his meter’s ability to measure them. This story was reported in a major US news […]
June 18 – June 22 “Don’t expect to get a penis every Friday, because you won’t.” Thus spake Cassandra, introducing occasional penis Fridays, a new LWON effort, so to speak. The introductory post in the series concerned banana slug sex, which is even grosser than the sum of its parts, and that’s saying a lot. […]
June 10 – June 15 This week we celebrated Father’s Day, and because LWON has too many ladies and not enough mens, we brought in some hired muscle to create some menspace. Assuming the role of temporary dude, I started the week wondering about the generational echoes of missing fathers. Guest poster Greg Hanscom showed […]
A framed photo of a man hung in my grandmother’s bedroom until the day she died. He had a receding hairline over a long forehead over a strong, sweet face. His name was Hans Rudolf Weiss and he was Charlotte’s husband and the father of her three children. His picture went with her through six […]
June 4- June 8 This week, Cameron explains about the long history of complaining about the gloomy weather in Southern California. Guest poster and Cassie’s man Soren Wheeler took on the phrase “dumbing down” as it is routinely dispensed by scientists tired of science journalism: “The implication is that if you need those things to […]
May 21 – 25 This week was LWON’s second birthday. To celebrate, we rounded up some of our favorite comments of the past year and threw them a little party. Cameron told us why abalone are like Neil Gaiman, just putting his ideas out there, never knowing what would be read, what someone might respond […]
May 14 to May 18 “Most people in counterintelligence are unlikely.” Read Ann’s story of Harry Baig IMMEDIATELY or I will come to your house, tie you to a chair and read it aloud to you. (This sounded a lot more threatening before I typed it out loud…) Heather laid down some capital-S science to […]