This post originally ran in November of 2011. The universality of science – an obligation to produce identical results no matter the setting – removes a certain sense of place from science history. What does it matter where mitosis was first understood, if it could just as well be discovered anywhere in the biosphere? Furthermore, […]
Miscellaneous
I have always liked the word “foothill.” It evokes not only the low hills at the foot of a mountain, but the pleasure of footing over them. When the hills turn soft and green, I like to imagine placing a marble at the top of a hill and watching it roll. Last weekend, I followed […]
My first experience with automated transcription happened a decade ago. In 2010 I joined Google Voice and started getting transcripts of my voicemails. The results were, not surprisingly, underwhelming. Back then, most speech recognition software was underwhelming. Here’s my first transcript: Hi Cassandra, this is Anna 10 calling to run. Thank you for the science […]
The other day I hovered over the computer as the clock counted down. Was I on the right page? Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. Was I logged in? At 7:00 p.m., the screen changed, and I zipped around with my cursor, checking the open slots, trying to check the right box. It wasn’t a vaccine […]
Material mirth: It has a nice ring to it. And there’s nothing wrong with buying new cork placemats or ridiculously overpriced hiking socks because new placemats or new socks make you smile. In fact, sometimes buying things you don’t really need is super rewarding. Like, if I could buy a tiny tropical white-sand island with […]
I’ve reached the stage of pandemic isolation, anxiety, hope, despair, faith, exhaustion, general twitchiness and sheer endurance — as have we all — where a nice alternate reality might help. I don’t mean a fantasy. I mean a reality that exists somewhere else — but no, that won’t work, the pandemic is everywhere. So I […]
My mother is an artist, and when she was a kid in New Mexico she’d draw horses in a Southwestern style, jaunty spring in their step and delicately curved, a bit like the art of Navajo, Acoma, or Zuni, all of which could have influenced her. The other day, I came across a couple of […]
If you grew up in the U.S. South or Midwest, there’s a good chance you are familiar with the “live laugh love” home decor aesthetic. For the uninitiated, it’s hard to describe, as it takes many forms, but, like US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once defined obscenity: you know it when you see it. […]
