Like many multiethnic and multicultural people, I’ve had difficulty coming to terms with my multifaceted yet fragmented identity. As a half-Iranian in the midst of Americans, I’ve lacked key cultural influences and a US-centric worldview, while in Iran I feel like an outsider at times. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to visit twice so far—once […]
Miscellaneous
November 9-13 This week, guest poster Soren Wheeler shares why the chaos and failure inherent in science should be embraced in science education. In a dispatch from China, I offer a glimpse into the fieldwork that, despite the roaches, makes my heart go pitter-pat. Craig Childs exposes a secret of the cracked and desolate Atacama Desert: It comes, gloriously, to life. During this week of Veteran’s […]
Rain has been falling on the driest non-polar desert in the world, famous for parts of it not seeing a drop of rain for centuries. The Atacama Desert in South America is caught in the rain shadow of the Andes on one side, and cold dry air washing in from an Antarctica ocean current on the […]
Sometimes, while out on the job, I have to pinch myself and think, ‘hold on to this moment.’ Because the moments that make up my workday can be truly fabulous. Here’s what last week’s pinch was for: I was squatting on the ground at the Bifengxia panda base in central China, on a cloudy but pleasantly […]
November 2 – 6, 2015 Our identities include our birth dates, says Sally. So what if you don’t have one? Helen walked the Cotswold Way and entered the liminal state of all pilgrims. How happy are clams, really, asks Cameron. Guest Nicholas Suntzeff reminisces about the old tensions between Chile and Bolivia, and how losses […]
I let the children have a go first and then reach out a recently hennaed hand, palm up, to accept the flannel armband from Mounir. The whole thing suddenly seems a little flimsy. Are birds supposed to wobble? I’m a lot taller than those children, and my arm is accordingly further from the ground than the […]
Sally says the big breakthrough in hyper super fast electronics is not silicon, not graphene, but the black gunk that collects in your septic system pipes. At least there’d be plenty of it. Erik says the hardest of the hardest-core people are not the mountain climbers or the trekkers on the Inca trail, but the […]
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 […]
