Snark Week: The cat that jumped the shark

Welcome to Snark Week 2018! Not all cute-but-scary animals are biological. Allow me to expand the remit of Snark Week to include the dreaded CryptoKitty. Adorable and fluffy? Absolutely. Existentially dangerous? Most certainly. This creature packs a triple punch. Once critically endangered, it is now trying to claw its way out of jeopardy – on […]

Snark Week: An Underground, Organized Crime Syndicate

Welcome to Snark Week 2018! Many years ago I worked as an environmental consultant for developers looking to meet and/or skirt federal and state regulators. People used to tell me I was on the leading edge of environmental work – where the rubber met the road. It didn’t feel that way. Mostly I felt like […]

Welcome to Snark Week 2018!

It’s been another year full of terror and destruction and to celebrate everything that makes us afraid, the Discovery Channel is hosting its annual fear fest, called Shark Week. But we at LWON have always felt that fear of sharks is just a cheap and easy way to tickle our amygdalae. And while we may […]

Redux: A Penis Shaped Like a Musical Instrument

We haven’t had a post in our occasional ‘Thank God It’s Penis Friday‘ series in quite awhile, so here’s one that we first published in 2013. Warning: images in links may be unsuitable for some. (Oh who am I kidding? Images in links may be unsuitable for most).  By the time dermatologist Sanjeev Vaishampayan met […]

Corvid Redux Week: An Argument About Crows

This first ran March 9, 2011.  I haven’t changed my mind.  Crows take care of each other, talk constantly, have their enemies lists, are smart, are wicked, and remind me a lot of the rest of us.“Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood.”  MacBeth is talking, telling his wife it’s a […]

Corvid Redux Week

The People of LWON apparently have several preoccupations in common (Bugs, Love; Bugs, Hate) and one of them is corvids, the family of crows and ravens.  In case you need to be convinced of the charm, deplorability, and urgent importance of corvids, we collect them all into one week, this week, beginning today, right now.

Eclipse Week: Not Even Looking Up

So, LWON is eclipsing, on into next week.  And if the internet is to be believed, half the country will be pulled north and the other half south and they’ll converge in the middle, on the path of totality.  It’s charming, how a population that normally lives at arm’s length from earthly reality — milk […]

Eclipse Week: Seen Through Every Lens

There’s been a lot in the media about eclipses this year. In fact, it’s fair to say that America has gotten a little eclipse crazy over the last couple months. (For those of you who just got back from a year stranded on a deserted island, we are expecting a total solar eclipse to cross […]