Here’s a thing I hate: calling plugs and ports “male” and “female.” In case you’ve never heard of this before, the terms are applied like this: things that plug are called “male” and things that receive those plugs are called “female.” So, a nut is female. A bolt is male. Your headphones have a male […]
Commentary
I grew up in rural and small-town midwest. Some people were richer than we were, some poorer. And being normal, hierarchizing humans, we always knew who was rich and who was poor. But regardless everybody went to the same grocery stores, schools, churches, dime stores, movie theaters, summer concerts. In other words, nobody was so […]
Cassandra wrote a post about the landlocked Bolivian navy in which she explained, in passing, that Bolivia once had a coast but lost it to Chile in the War of the Pacific. One of the comments on that post, by guest poster Nick Suntzeff, was a post in itself and we thought you’d like to […]
Before I begin, a disclaimer: I’m sick of writing about mammography. It feels like groundhog day — I’ve been writing the same damn story, over and over and over again, for nearly 15 years. This is at least the fifth time I’ve written a LWON post about mammograms. (See also: Breast cancer’s false narrative, The […]
I’ve fallen, relatively unexpectedly, into a beat. This is something I hear that some journalists plan, but for me it was simply a snowball effect. I did a story about prosthetics. Then I did another. Then amputees and prosthetists started calling me, and I just kept covering the field. I love covering prosthetics. I talk […]
The world is full of iniquity. Guys shoot up college classes; they also shoot up churches, malls, and elementary schools. Little kids get shot playing on their front porches. A hospital gets bombed and its doctors die. Drug companies raise prices of drugs for sick people by obscene amounts. Gun advocates keep the country locked […]
The first memory I know for sure is the smell of rain. I remember a screen door with holes in it big enough to let in a hummingbird, and outside I could see blue bellies of clouds over a dirt road. I can only figure it was somewhere in Arizona where I was born. I’ve always […]
Living in a foreign country can be exhilarating. Every time you step out your front door you are exploring a strange and exciting land. It’s like you are always on vacation. Likewise, reporting in a foreign country can be amazing as you get to dig into another culture in a way that no one else […]