As of tomorrow, May 20, LWON will have been alive for five years. LWON is a little surprised at this and entirely pleased with itself. In celebration, two of our brilliant alumni have agreed to write guest posts listing the Top Five Things They Want to List the Top Five Of. We are, and always […]
Curiosities
One night this spring I left all the doors open to the van. It was stinkier than usual, and I figured anyone who thought they might peer inside would have found little of value before being frightened off by the smell. But the next morning when I turned the ignition on, the kids gasped. Our […]
In keeping with the brave tradition of gullible, single-source reporting, here’s an astounding science news report. It ran in the News and Views section of the prestigious journal, Nature, a couple weeks ago, I don’t know how I missed it, and it surely deserved more than the brief flurry of attention it got on Twitter. […]
Dear friends! Forgive a change of form A deviation from the norm For on the feast of Saint Pat-rick A man who liked his Limerick We here present for all to see The science news from A to Z The facts from ‘cross the universe The Science Times, told in light verse Today above the […]
This was originally published 8/23/2011. More should have changed by now. This is a sort of permanent redux.Today is my birthday, a good time to reflect. And one of the things I have found myself brooding over lately is my love of Baltimore. As fans of The Wire know, the city has more than its […]
“The problem with France is that there’s no French word for entrepreneur.” It’s tragic that George W. Bush didn’t actually say this, because it perfectly illuminates the stealth with which languages insinuate themselves into each other. If you speak English, you probably know that when you say sans and en vogue you’re using import words. […]
Dear LWON readers, I’d like to ask you a question. Twice recently I’ve written about properties of black holes that blow my mind. In each instance, my inspiration was a detail from a movie. First was Interstellar. The great gravitational grip of the black hole in that movie, as is the case for all black holes, distorts […]
I’ve probably said this before, but I really like maps. In college, I bought a huge collection of used maps at a geography department sale to use as wrapping paper. When we lived in Oregon, we got a gigantic one of the state to put on the living room wall. (We also got an even […]
