A couple of weeks ago, Michelle subverted the established cultural order by adopting her five-year old’s suggestion that Bilbo Baggins was a girl. Most people applauded but some gnashed their teeth: don’t second-guess literature, they said, and if Bilbo is a hero and heroes are boys, then so be it. But I have prior and […]
Ann
This post — a proposal which, like Erik’s, could solve a significant world problem if only anybody would listen — originally ran on March 12, 2012. A week or so ago, I commented on an Abstruse Goose cartoon about probabilities. My brother-the-statistician commented on my comment, taking me apart – lovingly — for missing the […]
About a month ago, I wrote a review of a play by David C. Cassidy about Farm Hall. Farm Hall was the English country house in which the British government, just after World War II, sequestered the German nuclear scientists they’d kidnapped. The scientists’ rooms were bugged, and their conversation was recorded and transcribed by […]
25- 29 November This week, we gave thanks. Ann pointed out that sexual harrassment may be a subset of a deeper inability to keep other people from suffering the consequences of your own inner demons. Kant is involved. Jessa identifies a central mechanism keeping us from flying off into virtual existences — that pesky inner […]
About a month ago, the science writing community found out that one of its leaders was sexually harassing his younger female colleagues. The young women, especially those looking for networks and jobs, took to the internet and named him in front of his own community. The internet got its shorts in an uproar which eventually focused on […]
Ben: OK, everyone. Forget Tesla. It’s time to start obsessing about Luis Alvarez. [That’s Luis Alvarez in the photo, standing in front of the Great Artiste. This post began, as so much in life does, with a Twitter conversation. Ben Lillie, a physicist and writer, began it; other people added to it. One of those […]
October 28 – November 1 This week, Erik told us to eat the most delicious little bastards in the ocean. Why is the moose population dwindling? Roberta investigated. I wonder if we can ever agree on a single truth without paying the price. Ann showed why looking at the universe only in the optical wavelengths […]
Astronomers irritate the hell out of me, NASA’s in particular, not the people but their press releases: never met a superlative they didn’t like, Biggest Black Hole, Farthest Quasar, Youngest Galaxy, and on and on, far into the night. The black hole’s size isn’t interesting unless it says something about how galaxies form. The quasar’s […]