This post originally appeared Feb. 13, 2018 It starts quietly enough. At around 9:30 a.m., I strap snowshoes to my feet and part ways with some friends bound for a backcountry ski. While they skin over a nearby saddle, my dog Taiga and I shuff our way into the stream of snowshoers along the boundary […]
Month: January 2020
“It’s so cute,” said Pete, watching our new robot vacuum cleaner gently ram the kitchen table. After gradually inching past the obstacle, the robot moved haphazardly around the room, missing the most obvious specks of dirt. Pete swept some of the dirt into a neat line in front of the robot, cooing encouragement. I could […]
On September 4, 2014, LWON welcomed a new occasional contributor, Bad Science Poet. (Motto: “It’s not the science that’s bad—it’s the poetry!”™) The initial post (below) as well as subsequent contributions survive online. To this day, LWON hasn’t disavowed them. MAYBE, MAYBE NOT Is that uncertainty I see? Its position known to only me? Is […]
Who doesn’t love nominative determinism? The idea that your name plays a significant role in shaping your career or even your destiny is irresistible, especially with a steady supply of examples so copious you could trip over them, and even some science to support the idea. But it got me wondering – what if your […]
So, on Monday I went away to get some writing done. I was at a cheap AirBnB 10 minutes from my house. It’s the first week in January, and although I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, I wanted some time at the beginning of the year to see where […]
Every fall thousands of kokanee salmon spawn in the rocky shallows of Idaho’s Lake Coeur d’Alene, and every fall hundreds of bald eagles descend to devour them. One frigid, blustery day in early January, Elise and I drove out to catch the tail end of the months-long feast. The eagle flock had been smaller this […]
I’ve already written for LWON once about the power outages that swept California this fall. Soon after I posted that piece, however, I heard from a family that lost power in the midst of a medical crisis, and wanted to share their story. I met this family in 2018, while reporting a story for the […]
That’s a somewhat newer mission patch from the National Reconnaissance Office, the spy satellite outfit which is clearly still at the top of its game. The amateur NRO watchers are still watching. I follow some of them on Twitter. Lately they’ve also been watching: the Starlink satellites, the launch of international asteroid probes, pretty pictures […]