Making a Better Heart

This fall, I did something that I’ve done only once before in three decades of writing: for two whole weeks I booked off work and took a real vacation. Freelance writers can rarely afford half-month-long holidays. But I had spent a good part of 2010 in cardiac wards, tending to my visibly failing father and watching […]

Triassic Park

I probably shouldn’t say this, but I love it when scientists occasionally throw all caution to the wind and clamber out on what seems a visibly shaky limb. Not of course, when they are offering up some new off-the-wall theory on autism or sudden infant death syndrome or flu vaccines—fields in which a little speculation […]

The Children’s Hour

There is something rare and elusive on the ceiling of Rouffignac Cave in southern France, something that at first looked like etchings of undulating snakes or bending waterways or even strangely shimmying humans, but that now turn out to be something far more ephemeral and wondrous to my eyes—works of art by very young apprentices: […]

Help Wanted: DIY Dinosaurs

Have you ever looked at a chicken? I mean really looked, and not the kind that comes safely shrink-wrapped in a Styrofoam tray? There’s something in the eyes, something still-wild, almost menacing—no, really menacing. Given a little room to move around and enough conspecifics to elicit social behaviors, the animals are aggressive, territorial, and relentlessly […]

Guest Post: Should We Clone Endangered Species?

In 2000, the last Pyrenean ibex died. These were mountain goat-like mammals with fierce black horns that scampered around the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Some cells had been taken from that last animal, and in 2009 the world learned that scientists had been able to clone the creature: a Pyrenean ibex kid was […]

Fight Club

For the past two weeks, I’ve been riveted by an annual spectacle played out in an arena seating 22,547 of the most rabid tennis fans in the universe. The U.S. Open in New York City is one of the world’s four great tennis tournaments, and each year as the glorious days of summer begin to […]

The King Must Die

A little over two weeks ago, on the evening of August 10th, a young Irish heavy-equipment operator spotted what he thought was an old leather car seat jutting out of the drained fields of Cashel Bog. Jason Phelan was nearing the end of a long day on a harvester, a giant machine that slices peat […]

The Benefits of War?

In the festive spirit of LWON’s first birthday celebration, Jessa asked me the following question: “ Squirrel it however you like — War: What is it good for?” The answer follows. What is war good for? Absolutely nothing. Listen to me–I’ll say it again: absolutely nothing. Huh. And yet … Edwin Starr had it absolutely […]