Debunking Hollywood: Science On the Fringe

I am just sitting down to dinner at makeshift cafeteria a few miles away from a Maya dig site, called Xultun, in the jungles of Northern Guatemala. It’s my third day there, and I am still not used to the howler monkeys and giant insects. But most of the students around me have been here [...]

Birds in a Blender

Imagine for a second that the country of Mexico was a long funnel, with the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts as the sides of the funnel. And imagine you were to roll a marble down the Pacific side, all the way from San Diego, down Sonora, passed Mazatlan, Jalisco (though it takes a little hop over [...]

Debunking Hollywood: Knockout Shot

Today LWON is proud to announce a new intermittent  series, ala TGIPF. Every so often our writers will choose a common trope in movies and television – something based at least loosely in science – and pick it apart. If you have any suggestions for topics, drop them into the comments or send them to @erikvance [...]

The Last Word

March 4 – 8 This week, Tom delved deep into the mystery of the SCOBY lumps found at the bottom of an old jug of apple juice. Think nature documentaries merely observe? Don’t read Erik’s post. Heather describes the conditions faced by an archaeology writer in the field. If we want to get rid of [...]

Cry the Beloved Porcupine

In 2001, fresh out of college and yearning for adventure, I moved to South Africa. My recollection is that I had seen Cry the Beloved Country and The Power of One several times and decided that I had to go to Africa to intern at the university and write bad poetry. I’ll admit, the entomology [...]

The last word

25 February to 1 March This week, Ann blew all our minds with the story of the Farm Hall tapes, the greatest-ever lesson in counterfactual thinking.  Also, just off the cuff, who else thinks a dubstep group called “Hitler’s Uranium Club” lurks in our future? Cameron says no one does austerity quite like the people [...]

Not Every Day Is A Good Day

On the best days, journalism is a roller coaster of excitement and possibility – a front row seat to the entire human endeavor. Science journalism, on a good day, is especially so. You never know if you will be interviewing a Nobel laureate about the universe’s stretch marks, inspecting boxes of lethal scorpions, or strapping [...]

Bad Wind Made Better

Last year, I published a series critical of modern wind farms. They dealt with a number of pretty dirty land deals in southern Mexico related to new wind farms. Although they were on the cover of a major national newspaper, they didn’t get the attention I thought they deserved (as with most of my stories, [...]