The comb was found in a trash pile, what the archeologists call a midden, not far above the sea and just outside the remains of a longhouse. From the sit of the house and the site of the midden we know it was an easy toss: you could practically step outside and hurl food scraps, […]
Miscellaneous
My kid is on his way to university this year, and it’s hard not to get swept into doomscrolling opinion pieces. AI is going to take over everything and there will be no entry level jobs left. Did I do the wrong thing by encouraging my child’s interest in knowledge work? Should I have nudged […]
Have you noticed Mar-a-Lago face popping up in pop culture? It’s freaky. Certain conservative women and billionaires’ second wives—people who started out looking perfectly fine—now have puffy lips, exaggerated cheeks, and eyes that look perpetually surprised. I finally figured out what they remind me of: marionettes. They look like marionettes. With control-me, make-me-dance strings definitely […]
This was first posted on November 17, 2017. The latest explanation of gamma ray bursts are that they’re massive stars going supernovae and collapsing immediately to black holes and in the process, aiming high-intensity jets at our skies. They’re still the brightest things in the universe, the brightness of a trillion suns, and they last […]
The world is a lot right now, so I want to suggest that you find some little delights to keep your spirits up. Perhaps start with birds. (And if that doesn’t work, there are always dogs.) Last May, I wrote about how I’d become a bird spy. A year later, I’m still obsessed with my […]
Hey Alexa, how long can a beaver hold its breath? I’m asking because I was kayaking last night at Totier Creek off the James River and I spotted a beaver swimming from one bank to another, his little head sticking up like a thumb and his body and paddle of a tail cutting a V […]
Caribou collar compilation provided by the National Park Service. Last week I traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska, for work. Though the melt had begun, plenty of snow still blanketed the ground and thick rafts of ice clotted the rivers. It had been a big winter in the area, the coldest on record, with 31 days at […]
This post originally ran in 2015. A commenter at the time had an intriguing suggestion for the solution, which I have added below! Investigative journalists seem awfully glamorous – delving into mysteries and catching those liars at their game. Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the aptitudes involved, so I steer clear of it. But […]
