This is the third post in Affair of the Heart, a series that takes place at the intersection of a highly-experienced science writer and the medical system. by Colin Norman When my aortic aneurysm could no longer be ignored, and my cardiologist recommended a consultation with a specialist, I finally began to act like a science journalist. […]
Guest Post
I have a beaver, which I am going to kill, which is a complex thing to do. The beaver moved into a small pond on my property a month after I moved from Brooklyn. I came 100 miles, the beaver had to move less than a mile, coming from wetlands that border part of my […]
This is the second post in Affair of the Heart, a series that takes place at the intersection of a highly-experienced science writer and the medical system. A few months after my brother almost died from an aortic dissection, when his aorta began to break down right where it emerges from the heart, I was […]
Affair of the Heart: I. A Brush with Death This is the last post in the series, Off Our Meds, in which LWON examined some scary issues in medicine but didn’t resort to fear mongering because we didn’t have to, medicine being scary enough as it is. This is also the first post in […]
Welcome to “Off Our Meds,” a weeklong series in which LWON examines some scary issues in medicine. We won’t resort to fear mongering, because we don’t have to. Medicine is scary enough as it is. Last week, over at The Atlantic, Jacoba Urist wrote about a truism in journalism: deaths closer to home matter more. This sounds […]
Having grown up in Connecticut, I spent most of my childhood exploring streams, creeks, shorelines and marshes. Some of those places weren’t just mucky, they were dirty (as in “this is why we have the Clean Water Act” dirty). But all around, there were lush, green, magical places. When I moved to the arid Southwest, […]
I’ve been teaching undergraduates for a while now, various takes on the general theme of the environment and society. Here are some things I’ve noticed. The students often believe that they have discovered the environment and all the bad things we are doing in it. Up to now, they suppose, we have been unaware, self-centered […]
Snow fell on the four quarters of the world; icy winds blew from every side; the sun and the moon were hidden by storms. — Writer and folklorist Padraic Colum, citing an Icelandic legend in Orpheus: Myths of the World When you live in Iceland, you kind of expect a rough winter. But […]