You cannot walk more than a dozen paces at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, a cloister of sorts for the more theoretically- and mathematically-inclined of the science community, without happening onto a chalkboard. Secured on at least one wall of each small office on the building’s two floors is a spacious chalkboard. Chalkboards run […]
Month: February 2014
Your cable company is screwing you. You already knew that, of course. You’ve seen your cable bill. But I want to tell you about a less obvious way that they’re sucking your bank account dry. They’re doing it through the cable box. I don’t have cable, but I used to. And what I miss most […]
In the late 1960s, when North America was first wising up to pollution, a group of progressive farmers resolved to do their part. Phosphate levels in nearby lakes were promoting blue-green algal blooms, excessively nourishing the cyanobacteria. The blooms consumed oxygen in the lakes, and massive fish kills followed. While it was easy to […]
Pia’s birthday was last week. I didn’t call her or send a card or bake a cake. Such efforts would have fallen on deaf ears, because she died six years ago in January. Pia was the older sister I’d never had, and she’d welcomed me into her life with apricots and a warm pot of […]
If you’re interested in writing, and you’ve been on the internet in the last few days, you may have seen that Amtrak granted a pilot writers’ residency to a New York writer, who took the Lakeshore Limited to Chicago and back, working away in her 3’6” by 6’8” sleeper cabin. And since then, other writers […]
February 17 – 21 This week, Ann shed light on the connection between the lawn chairs littering wintery Baltimore streets and Lord of the Flies. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like inside Biosphere 2, Michelle can give you the tour! Scientists are on a quest to find the Neil Peart of the […]
On February 16, 1961, the Seattle Times reported that geologists had dug out the roughly 10,000-year-old bones of a giant sloth from a peat bog near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Two years later, alongside an article about Boeing’s plans for a supersonic jet and an ad for “Ladies’ Days” bargains on bedspreads and cribs, the newspaper […]
The other day on a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., I ordered a ginger ale. The flight attendant asked if I’d like the whole can—the plane had been in line for more than an hour waiting for a slot to take off, so I suppose she was feeling generous—and I accepted. More ginger ale, […]