When I was in college my department offered a course in comparative anatomy. The idea was that you could learn a lot by comparing and contrasting different species. I was reminded of that course while reading Emily Willingham’s new book, Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis, which is published tomorrow. The book offers a […]
Christie
With apologies to Colin Nissan. I don’t know about you, but I have been waiting all year to wrap my hands around some tasty, tender tomatoes and arrange them in colorful patterns on my kitchen counter. That shit is going to look like the embodiment of late summer. I’m dusting off my harvesting baskets and […]
During this summer of covid, and I’ve been thinking of what poet Billy Collins called those, “forlorn chairs/though at one time it must have seemed/a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.” Even situated, as they usually are, to take in the view, it’s hard for those chairs to compete with the attention-grabbing distractions […]
This is my first pandemic, and I had no idea what to expect. Which is sort of on theme, because the the overarching feeling I’ve experienced inside the COVID-19 pandemic is uncertainty. Will I get sick? Will my loved ones die? How long will this ordeal last? Will we ever have a vaccine or a […]
Ten years ago, blogs were still new enough to be exciting. A small group of science writers thought they’d like to see what this blogging thing was about. On May 20, 2010, the Last Word on Nothing was born. Ten years later, the blogging landscape has changed. As has the world. A lot. But LWON […]
The first version of this post ran on January 26, 2012. Since then, we’ve continued to set records for the hottest year on record. My question began with a social media status update by my friend Paolo Bacigalupi. Paolo wrote: At what point does a “drought” become an “arid climate?” Paolo posed his question months […]
I’d just filled a wine bottle with Malbec and was handing it to a neighbor who was operating the manual corking machine when it occurred to me that wine making is a lot like book writing. I was at the tail end of a whirlwind tour to promote my new book, and I was home […]
It’s October, which means that my local hardware store is offering a discount to shoppers who wear pink, Allegiant Airlines is selling pink drinks and police officers across the country are donning pink badges, all the name of “breast cancer awareness.” Also known as “pinkwashing,” these pink ribbon awareness campaigns allow people to feel like […]