The Last Word

By: | May 26, 2012

May 21 – 25

This week was LWON’s second birthday. To celebrate, we rounded up some of our favorite comments of the past year and threw them a little party.

Cameron told us why abalone are like Neil Gaiman, just putting his ideas out there, never knowing what would be read, what someone might respond to.

Funny enough, that’s also what Christie loves about unpaid blogging; no paycheck means no “producing content”.

Christie also tells us what it was like to watch the annular eclipse through wine-in-a-box, and the importance of thinking about your place in the universe.

Some people have Bette Davis eyes; Cassie explains to us about her “mushroom eyes.”

 

See you next week!

Lonely Abalone

By: | May 25, 2012

Single White Abalone: female, 7, seeks male. Too bad we’re not hermaphroditic like terrestrial gastropods, or I wouldn’t have to be so picky. Likes: rocky substrate, algae. Looking for a mate who lives within three to five meters. Long-distance just doesn’t work for me.

The white abalone, the first marine invertebrate to make the federal endangered species list, has a problem with distance. In fact, most abalone do.  They’re broadcast spawners, sending their gametes out into the sea. If a male and female are farther than five meters apart, it’s like they’re on opposite sides of the ocean—they won’t be able to reproduce.

So when something starts to wipe out their population—overfishing, diseases, predators like sea otters—things can go bad, and quickly. Continue reading →

Why I Blog

By: | May 24, 2012

Monday, we marked LWON’s second anniversary. I was not one of the original contributors to this blog, but a year ago this week, Tom Hayden invited me to contribute my first post. Since becoming an official LWON contributor last June, I’ve written almost 30 posts, about one every 12 days. For this work, I’ve received exactly zero dollars, zero prizes and zero resume-worthy rewards.

If you’d asked me a couple of years ago whether I’d ever blog without compensation, I’d have scoffed. I have a strict policy of never writing for free. Writers who give their work away to commercial outlets piss me off, because they cheapen our profession and train publishers to expect writers to work without pay.

LWON is a worthy exception to my rule, because this labor of love exists solely on the voluntary efforts of LaWonians. None of us make any money from this site, and we are not beholden to commercial interests or outside influences. This place belongs to us.

And I can honestly say that LWON is the best thing that’s happened in my writing life during the past year. When I ponder why that’s so, I think of something Kurt Vonnegut said at a reading I attended many years ago. Go home and write a poem on a scrap of paper, he said. Then tear it into pieces and scatter it where no one will find it. It took me a while to fully understand his point. Continue reading →

Morel Madness

By: | May 23, 2012

My parents own roughly 100 acres of land smack dab in the heart of Wisconsin’s driftless area, a portion of the state left largely untouched by glaciers. When I was in high school, we built a cabin on that land. I remember weekends spent sawing two-by-fours and pouring cement. And when we couldn’t stand to drive another nail, we tromped the old logging roads, exploring the deep ravine that cleaves the property in two. And this is how we discovered that our land holds a precious secret. Morels. Continue reading →

Why the eclipse mattered.

By: | May 22, 2012

I have been hearing about Sunday’s annular eclipse for weeks. Earlier this month, I visited my parents in Albuquerque, and the eclipse was all my dad could talk about. Dad, known to the rest of the world as Dee Friesen, is President of the Albuquerque Astronomical Society (TAAS) and when I arrived at his house the other day, he was wearing a t-shirt with the words “Astronomy (not astrology)” written across the chest in big letters.

During the course of my four day visit, Dad managed to get me pretty excited about the eclipse. Albuquerque was inside the zone where the eclipse was visible in its entirety, and it was also about 90% visible in western Colorado, where I watched it from my front yard.

After it was all over, I called Dad with some questions. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday to Us Yay

By: | May 21, 2012

Happy Birthday to us, we’ve just turned two.  We’re bigger: we’ve added three new Persons of LWON.  And we’ve matured, that is, we stopped looking so much at our own bellybutton and are more aware of the intelligent, thoughtful Commenters of LWON.  So for our birthday celebration, we’ll look back at the year and not at at each other, but at you.   Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | May 19, 2012

May 14 to May 18

“Most people in counterintelligence are unlikely.” Read Ann’s story of Harry Baig IMMEDIATELY or I will come to your house, tie you to a chair and read it aloud to you. (This sounded a lot more threatening before I typed it out loud…)

Heather laid down some capital-S science to prove once again that dogs are effing awesome and always have been. I dare you to read her revelation that a 25,00- year-old mourner tucked a bone into a dead dog’s mouth and keep both eyes dry.

Ginny explained neuron-sucking robots! With music! And animation!

Guest poster Geoff Brumfiel pondered the art of the tweet.

And Cassie and her husband rounded out the week with a mini-flamewar in the comments under Richard’s answer to the long-standing question: How do we know the laws of physics are universal?

See you next week!

No Exceptions! None! Nowhere! Never! (Or not.)

By: | May 18, 2012

Cassandra, for Richard:

How do we know the laws of physics are universal? Why can’t there be a far-off galaxy where our laws of physics don’t apply? (Is that a really stupid question?)

Richard, for Cassandra:

We don’t. There can. (It’s not.)

Such was Cassie’s contribution to LWON’s first anniversary post last May. As part of the celebration, each member of the masthead asked one of the other members a question that would serve as the topic of a future post. Now that LWON’s second anniversary is nigh—the new challenge will appear Monday—I figure I’d better answer her questions. (If we were asking one another questions again this year—alas, we’re not—mine would go to Cassie: How come you got to ask me two? [Actually, three?])

First question:  How do we know the laws of physics are universal?

Continue reading →