At last, it is here. February 14th: Your favorite party for beheaded Christian martyrs. And your opportunity to tell that special someone just how much you care. So what are you to do now that those gum-lacerating conversation hearts are no more? Or when the greeting cards on offer just involve too many soft kittens […]
Miscellaneous
When you think of plagiarism, poems and books probably spring to mind more easily than, say, scientific papers. And words more easily than images. But plagiarism is not uncommon in science papers, and it often takes the form of images fiddled with and grafted from elsewhere. Whether they’re a consequence of laziness or a desire […]
Last November, my mother gave me several crumpled paper bags full of flower bulbs for my birthday. Daffodils, hyacinths, snowdrops, paperwhites — the bulbs promised frilly, fragrant bounty and I couldn’t wait to plant them. Then life got hectic. The bags sat in a corner for a week, then a month. By the time I opened the bags […]
During the descent of the most recent polar vortex, you probably heard that the Midwest was colder than Antarctica. And it was! But then the Midwest usually is, this time of year. The comparison “colder than Antarctica” makes sense on a visceral level. If the temperatures are below zero and the windchills are in the […]
I wrote this one year ago as my kid was ramping up his language skills in Mexico. Today, I am in a different country and my kid’s Spanish is rapidly disappearing. Sigh. Having a baby is a miracle. Everyone tells me so, so it must be true. It’s also an adventure – again, according to […]
Christie’s new book about recovery is out today! It’s called Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery. If you are an athlete, you will love it. If you are a wannabe athlete or a science writer or a person, you will still love it […]
Mammals get all the love. I get it. Furry things, especially those that like to snuggle and smell like Fritos, make us feel warm inside. I myself hug goats on a farm in my spare time, and I’ve been known to butt in front of small children at the petting zoo. (Don’t judge me—that kid […]
Back in the day, we used to run an intermittent series called Penis Friday, also known as TGIPF. It involved things like banana slug sex and deep sea squid sex. Then #metoo happened, and we kind of lost our taste for it. But bed bugs are on the rise around the world, and you, Dear […]
