If you have been at LWON for a while, you might have noticed that I post this one every year–because somehow, once again, it is June. And once again, it is gloomy. But things have been extra-cloudy this year, and people who don’t live in California have noticed! I mean, the Washington Post was even […]
Miscellaneous
The historian of science Owen Gingerich died on May 28. We’re re-posting this essay, which originally appeared on June 10, 2011, because it involves the author’s personal encounter with him. The references to dates (e.g., “A few months ago”) remain as in the original post. The 16-year-old student has an idea, but she doesn’t have […]
For the last two years I’ve been working on a book about dogs. Dog intelligence, in particular. When I started on it, I kind of wondered what I could possibly say that hasn’t been said. I mean, there are A LOT of dog books out there already, many of them dealing with cognition at least […]
A version of this essay originally appeared June 15, 2012, as part of this site’s Father’s Day series. In the final paragraph I’ve updated one temporal reference (“two weeks ago yesterday” to “May 31, 2012”) and added one recent personal development. “My father,” I would say, “is older than the universe.” The line has always […]
The other day, I had to take everything off a bookshelf I replaced, and I had to move one of my oldest possessions: A beautiful, unkempt houseplant of indeterminate background. It has been on a high shelf most of the time I’ve had it, and even before that. My husband rescued it from the upper […]
I’ve been talking with other writers about AI. We huddle in our conversations like anarchists. Some have been using ChatGBT as a tool and are quite happy. Some fear for their careers and think recent, rapid advances in large language models are very, very bad. I’ve turned off autocorrect on my computer. Is that enough? […]
Lately I’ve been having recurring nightmares about packing. In the dreams I badly want to get somewhere – onto a plane, off of a bus, into a boat – but I can’t, because I have too much shit. I can’t jettison anything in the dream, and yet there’s no way to get everything into my […]
Helen, currently hors de combat but returning soon to battle, has been listening for birds forever and ever since she wrote this, October 2, 2019. For all I know, she can now tell sparrows apart, a magisterial accomplishment. -Ed. I’ve always been bad at bird songs. My neighbor corrected me on this on Sunday, as […]