It Wasn’t The Junk Food That Made Me Fat – It Was The Bag

When I think back on the formative moments of my youth, it’s hard to top the Canada-Wide Science Fair of 1980. It was there, in Thompson, Manitoba, that I first truly experienced the transformative power of science to make daily life richer, better, more rewarding. No, it wasn’t my own engagement with the scientific method [...]

The Last Word on The Science Writers’ Handbook

LWON is a group blog run semi-anarchically by 12 science writers. If you think that sounds like a recipe for chaos, just contemplate SciLance, an even more anarchic group of 35 science writers. Usually, SciLance is just a discussion group, so the chaos is relatively subdued. But last week, the writers of SciLance published their [...]

Correlation, Speculation and the Periodicity of Environmental Journalism

These are down times for environmental journalism – or so you’d think, judging by recent news and the attendant hand wringing. The New York Times not only disbanded its environmental desk in January, but shut down its popular Green Blog early in March, also. Meanwhile the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin, longtime environmental correspondent a reportorial [...]

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 [...]

Floating Domestic Object, Unidentified No Longer (part two of two)

Two weeks ago, Erika posted about a new addition to our household — no, not our adorable children, but rather some viscous blobs lurking in menacing fashion at the bottom of a long-ignored bottle of apple juice. Said juice jug was purchased in early April, 2012. It was offered to guests, who declined. The bottle [...]

Name that UFO (Unidentified Floating Object)

In which we ask our enlightened readers to solve a household mystery. Scene: The Check-Hayden kitchen. Erika (opens the refrigerator): Hm, this apple juice has been in here for a while. I should probably just finish it off.

Goodnight, Linnaeus: Bathtub Systematics and the Nature of Scientific Curiosity, Part I

150 million years ago in what is now the North American West, mighty diplodocus thundered across the terrain, stripping leaves from branches with its peg-like teeth and lashing away pests and predators with the 80-some vertebrae of its whip-like tail. They were magnificent creatures, as long as three school buses each. And for nearly a [...]

The Last Word

31 December – 4 January Well, I guess we made it through 2012 without dying. So, drink up and get back to work. Heather wrote about the strange therapeutic, cultural, and linguistic history of the tattoo. Guest poster Emily Underwood examined a part of the body so complicated that it requires 10,000 processors to simulate. [...]