Redux: Vanishing Points

This essay originally appeared in 2012. If the artwork above looks familiar, the reason might be that it was part of the argument that Ann made in a recent post. She suggested that the beauty of the Florentine paintings of the fifteenth century—“stunning, literally; you look at them and can hardly breathe”—couldn’t have been due […]

Space Is Real

A defensive back playing for a Texas university football team recently said something unusual into a press microphone. “I don’t believe in space,” he said. “I’m religious, so I think, like, we’re on our own right now. I don’t think there’s, like, other planets and stuff like that.”  I welcome eccentric ways of thinking. Being […]

Nobody Was Here

I don’t know how I managed to not know this for my whole life, but here it is: the Americas were the last continents to have people on them. By around 30,000 years ago, all the other continents had people on them. We didn’t have any people. Nobody. Empty of people. Why not? How do […]

Under the Kitchen Table is One Option

I have had occasion to mention January before, once with hard eyes and grit and once with faith and hope. I mean, it needs both, doesn’t it. Another option is always to become one with the cold, dark skies. You finally get through the infinite holiday season, think you can relax for a minute, and […]

Science Writer Goes Off the Rails

I’ve been interviewing an archeologist who’s famous for “sticking close to the data,” that is, not saying anything he can’t back with actual evidence. Reminding me of what I learned in my first year as a junior high school teacher: don’t make threats you can’t carry out, and that’s not as much a digression as […]

The Boundary Conditions Being What They Are

I’ve written books and didn’t find the experience pleasant: I’d go underground for 2 or 3 or 4 years, maybe 5, and when I’d stick my head up into the light of the world again, the world was changed. Like, during one of my underground sessions, the internet took hold and when I surfaced, the […]

Johnny and Oppie

Some smart cookie timed the release of the movie about Robert Oppenheimer to the week of the anniversary of Trinity, the first test of the first nuclear weapon. (Another smart cookie threw in the release of a Barbie movie and a notable Barbenheimer genre was born, but that’s not what this post is about right […]

What We’ve Completely 100% Changed Our Minds About

I’m not sure why I’m interested in what people change their minds about – maybe because I’m at the age where a person looks back and wonders what the hell that was all about. Like, a person of a certain age tries to find the through-lines of life and sees how many of them just […]