One of my favorite newspaper columnists has a Thanksgiving column that has been reprinted more or less year after year for nearly two decades (or at least, that’s as far as the Chronicle’s online archives reveal). Along with talking about why, in a sea of holidays, Thanksgiving is the one that gets his wholehearted support, […]
Miscellaneous
It’s amazing what scientists can do nowadays. They can get right down into the center of an atom. They can tell us in detail about rocks on other planets. So it’s no wonder when they report there are a certain number of very large animals in an area – and they only have to count […]
12 – 16 November This week, our site went boom. But we’re all better now. Cassie explored the compelling pseudscience behind chronic Lyme’s disease, and why it can sway even people who should know better. Ann considered gravity’s uncompromising brutality. Heather’s chilling story about how Fritz Haber changed her grandfather’s life is a reminder of […]
We were stuck in a black hole for a while but we blasted loose and now we’re back home. And grateful for your patience. _____ Photo: Koshyk
First, a disclaimer. This is the kind of discussion that happens when friends talk evolutionary biology over a bottle of wine. (Specifically, me, my husband Dave–whose knowledge of evolution comes from reading New Scientist magazine — and our friend Kevin.) Christie: Penises make no sense. They’re floppy, vulnerable appendages and males spend an inordinate amount […]
This is the kind of story that I love, a story about an ordinary person doing something perfectly ordinary, digging out the last of the potatoes from the garden, say, or chasing off after a dog that’s bolted into the woods, and suddenly stumbling on something wonderfully unexpected, something almost magical, something that abruptly, almost […]
The country is in the midst of a public health crisis. Two-thirds of adults and a third of all kids in the US are overweight or obese. Although no single factor is responsible for the nation’s weight gain, soda seems to be at least partly to blame. A decades-long study published earlier this month found that […]
Publications are funny creatures. I’ve worked for quite a few, mostly magazines, and each has had its own personality, its style of groupthink. Unlike a traditionally-structured corporation, its collective identity and mandate is vague, shifting as the names change and migrate upward on the masthead. The cover above is from the first fledgling magazine I […]
