Have you ever looked at a chicken? I mean really looked, and not the kind that comes safely shrink-wrapped in a Styrofoam tray? There’s something in the eyes, something still-wild, almost menacing—no, really menacing. Given a little room to move around and enough conspecifics to elicit social behaviors, the animals are aggressive, territorial, and relentlessly […]
In the festive spirit of LWON’s first birthday celebration, Jessa asked me the following question: “ Squirrel it however you like — War: What is it good for?” The answer follows. What is war good for? Absolutely nothing. Listen to me–I’ll say it again: absolutely nothing. Huh. And yet … Edwin Starr had it absolutely […]
Please welcome Michelle Nijhuis, the newest Person of LWON—and, given her street address, the one least likely to be stalked in the physical world. Michelle seems to spend a great deal of her time winning awards and fellowships, but that’s not why we like her. Rather, it’s because of the moments she sets aside to […]
A year on and many thousands of leaked documents later, it’s easy to forget how Wikileaks first came to wide international attention. But a recent paper in Psychological Science brought the memory back to me with a sharpness and intensity out of all proportion with the grainy YouTube video at the incident’s core. The memory […]
Being an environment reporter during the sixth great extinction can be a bit of a drag. Sure, there are tons of important, dramatic stories to cover, but they’re all so darned depressing. Oil spills, nuclear accidents, pillaged seas, the whole climate mess? Ugh. A decade or two of that every week can really start to […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience lately, that ineffable quality of being able to withstand trickling insults and outright catastrophe. It characterizes the Japanese ability to remain civil and calm throughout their ongoing weeks of dread, and the ability of some natural systems to bounce back after even the most egregious of impacts. It […]
The late-night radio airwaves—the insomniac’s solace, the new father’s companion—have been heavy with war, disaster and calamity for weeks now. How very different are the sounds of bombing runs over Tripoli from the small coughs and cries through the baby monitor, with which they commingle. The most extraordinary news of the past two weeks, however, […]
I sleep with old sneakers and work gloves under my bed. My house and car are stocked with hand-crank radios, potable water and archaic, shelf-stable foodstuffs like hardtack and jerky. In my closet there is a crowbar and a very large axe, which I will use, should an earthquake tumble the walls, to excavate through […]