Corridors of the Rainforest

Captain Matty is a brilliant storyteller. I know because earlier this month I went on his famous tour through the rainforest of Far North Queensland, Australia. As he drove our orange bus up petrifyingly narrow, sinuous roads, Matty told tales, tall and short: about the legendary ‘drop down‘, wicked cousin of the koala, so named [...]

Talking Universe Blues, Part 2

(This post is the second in a three-part series. The first appeared last Friday. The third will appear next Friday.) “What can we do about high school physics textbooks?” The question, I admit, stumped me. Not in the way that a question about whether gravity exists in other universes would stump me. That question I [...]

A drop of treasure, lost in an ocean of debt

Let’s get this out of the way first: Ancient Alexandria, it’s not. Still, the library of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California, San Diego, is the closest thing the marine sciences have to a central repository of books, periodicals and documents. And like that original Alexandria, this one is threatened by, [...]

Long, Tough Road to Stroke Recovery

January 3rd was a bad day for Cee. That morning she had a colonoscopy. The procedure went smoothly. But afterward, Cee felt ill. Something wasn’t right. She had a bite to eat, poured a glass of milk, and told her husband she was going to lie down. She set the milk on her nightstand. Then [...]

Abstruse Goose: Mmmm, Evolution

Abstruse Goose adds, in a sneaky little popup, that this is his best argument for intelligent design.  Given the finely-honed excellence of BLT’s,  Darwin might want to back down. http://abstrusegoose.com/339

What’s in a Footprint?

I love unguarded moments, those brief seconds when someone on stage or in front of a camera finally gives way to nervousness and says or does something completely unplanned and unrehearsed, something that just spills out like a stream overtaking its banks. For a moment, we see something that we weren’t meant to, something revealing, [...]

Talking Universe Blues, Part 1

(This post is the first in a three-part series. “Talking Universe Blues” will continue over the next two Fridays.) “Does gravity exist in other universes?” The question, I admit, stumped me. Did she—fourth row, on the aisle—mean that gravity might be leaking into our universe from a parallel universe? Unlikely. Her puzzled, perhaps lost, expression didn’t [...]

Message: Re-sign Up for RSS Feed

Not resign, re-sign.  Some electrons went wrong and our RSS feed broke and our subscribers washed away in the flood.  Is that enough metaphors for now?  We’ve got a new and improved RSS feed but please, if you’ve subscribed in the past, could you kindly and patiently re-subscribe?  With love, from the People of LWON [...]

Science Metaphors (cont): Standard Candle

Nothing is entirely trustworthy.  Friends are inconstant; presidents and professors are making it up; your grandmother didn’t always know what she was talking about; your very senses can fool you; and one of these fine days even the sun will blow up. Where is the touchstone, the standard, the fundamental reference frame? Where is the [...]

Whither the Dorset?

There’s nothing like a lost tribe to pique child-like curiosity. When an isolated band of Brazilian forest people were filmed this year, the world ogled the ochre-painted men with voyeuristic glee. Perhaps we longed for first-hand access to our own ancestor’s lives. One of these lost tribe stories – of the unconfirmed variety – is [...]