On Saturday, 38-year-old Alexander Vinokourov of Kazakhstan won the gold medal in the men’s Olympic cycling road race. Not everyone was cheering. As one cycling fan commented on twitter, Vinokourov’s win was, “Not good for cycling, sport or “Olympism.’” The reason for this grumbling? “Vino” is a former doper, and an “unrepentant” one by […]
Christie
When I was a biology researcher, the strangers I met at parties and on airplanes were always impressed when I told them how I made my living. Evidently, they envisioned my work as something out of Jurassic Park—a thrilling journey packed with breakthroughs and adventures. Few suspected the truth: doing science is mostly about performing […]
June 8, 2012, Cedaredge Colorado—It was an ordinary Friday afternoon. I was at my desk writing when I looked out the window and saw an enormous plume of smoke billowing from the back of our property. It was the kind of moment when you’re supposed to remain calm and remember all the wise things you […]
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. […]
This is a discussion about an uncomfortable subject—an emotion that everyone has felt, but no one wants to admit. Envy—it’s a four letter word. In the rare instances when we talk about it, we do so in whispers amongst our closest confidants. Mostly, we insist it doesn’t exist, because we don’t like what it says […]
Monday, we marked LWON’s second anniversary. I was not one of the original contributors to this blog, but a year ago this week, Tom Hayden invited me to contribute my first post. Since becoming an official LWON contributor last June, I’ve written almost 30 posts, about one every 12 days. For this work, I’ve received […]
I have been hearing about Sunday’s annular eclipse for weeks. Earlier this month, I visited my parents in Albuquerque, and the eclipse was all my dad could talk about. Dad, known to the rest of the world as Dee Friesen, is President of the Albuquerque Astronomical Society (TAAS) and when I arrived at his house […]
Happy Birthday to us, we’ve just turned two. We’re bigger: we’ve added three new Persons of LWON. And we’ve matured, that is, we stopped looking so much at our own bellybutton and are more aware of the intelligent, thoughtful Commenters of LWON. So for our birthday celebration, we’ll look back at the year and not […]