22 – 26 July The “since-you-live-in-Mexico-you’ll-probably-be-dead-tomorrow attitude” is the most frustrating thing about being a Mexican expat, says Erik. The smoky volcanoes? Not so much. Ann and Abstruse Goose showed us the grave harm that befalls physicists who try too hard to describe reality. Jessa explored the intriguing new science of awe, and how you […]
Ann
Why are the clouds moving so fast? Is the wind that’s pushing the clouds faster than the wind that’s blowing the trees? I remember, back when I lived in tornado country, hearing that when the winds aloft and the winds on the ground were moving in different directions, a tornado could form. Was that true? […]
June 17 – 21 “I think girls very much do want to be JASONs and they want to be in DARPA, they just don’t always know it, so we need to get them to read about it.” This week, Ann asked defense journalism powerhouse Sharon Weinberger to add her two cents to the ongoing LWON […]
Ann: May I introduce my friend and colleague, Sharon Weinberger. She once wrote a book about her trips to the world’s various nuclear test sites and it sold reasonably well, probably to boys. But recently somebody else’s book, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold History of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, […]
About ten years ago, doing research for a book, I asked Freeman Dyson about a study he’d helped do about whether we would have lost the war in Vietnam a little less if we’d used tactical nuclear weapons. Dyson and two colleagues, all members of a scientific advisory group called Jason, were doing this study […]
Outside the window, the neighborhood kids are running again. They’re about 12 years old, a boy and a girl and the girl’s little sister, about 8, and they’re racing around the court, up the street, along the alley, through a yard, and back onto the court, altogether maybe a full block, around and around. They’re […]
Richard and Temple Grandin have co-authored a book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, which is just out and which you should definitely and immediately buy. Before you do, Jessa and Ann have some questions. Ann: Richard, this subject is a departure for you. What is the subject, anyway? Richard: The immediate subject is the […]
#1. Couldn’t you use post-menopausal hot flashes to warm up cold people? Hot flashes are better warm-uppers than, say, heaters because they happen from the inside. Something in you lights up and you become radioactive; you glow, you emit. I won’t tell you why I was thinking about that because some of you get snide. […]
