The Opposite of Extinction

By: | May 4, 2015

Compléments de Buffon. t.1. Paris :P. Pourrat Frères,1838. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/item/54296
Last Thursday, a study in Science predicted that if global carbon emissions continue on their current “business-as-usual” trajectory, climate change will extinguish one-sixth of the species on earth. The figure comes with the usual caveats, which you can read about here and here. As a rough estimate of what lies ahead, though, the study is useful—and sobering.

Unfortunately, it’s also business as usual. While the one-in-six figure is especially startling, the major journals publish new findings about the current or predicted effects of climate change almost every week. The news is rarely good; as a journalist who writes about climate, my headline choices sometimes seem limited to It’s Gonna Be Really Bad and It’s Already Worse Than We Thought. These stories are important—don’t get me wrong—but their beat is so steady, and so unsettling, that I can’t blame readers for tuning them out. (Honestly, sometimes I wish I could tune myself out.) So let me use this space to tell you about a different kind of study, and a different kind of headline.

Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | May 2, 2015

A woman in a sweatshirt drives a ship.

April 27 – May 1, 2015

LWON’s own Mr. Cosmology does standup, launches new career.  Q: Why does the moon look larger when it’s closer to the horizon?  A: Because it is.

Roberta’s last post (and LWON is sad):  why are her dreams so boring? does the boringness have anything to do with age? Bye, Roberta.

Helen is depressed.  Then Helen drives a big ol’ icebreaker!  She smacks ice into a million tiny bits!  Helen recommends driving a giant Homeland Security asset as cure for depression.

Guest Molly Peeples, STScI astronomer, on Hubble’s 25th anniversary: asked for her reaction to Hubble’s original launch, she says she doesn’t remember it, she was in kindergarten.

Jennifer Holland had to go to the hospital.  She came back with three gifts, none of which she or anybody else on this earth would ever want.

What I Got: Three Gifts from the Recovery Ward

By: | May 1, 2015

Three_comical_hospital_scenes;_one_patient_has_his_leg_dress_Wellcome_V0015708 (2)1. The Abscess

Probably, when I first heard the doctor say to the patient, “The operating rooms are all booked until late tonight so we can just lance it right here, bedside,” that would have been the right time for me to make a little noise. That would have been an appropriate moment to peel back the curtain that separated my hospital bed from the other patient’s and waggle my fingers at the lady in scrubs, to suggest I be relocated. Before the lancing began. Because they would be, I knew, lancing an abscess near the lady’s, er, delicate lady part—not an event for public consumption.

But I didn’t make a peep. I cringed and curled my toes against the hospital blanket, silent in my little cave. I can’t explain why. I thought about saying something to reveal myself. But then, as their conversation became more personal, the window to speak up slammed shut. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Young Astronomer Looks Back

By: | April 30, 2015

photo 1

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the aptly named Space Shuttle Discovery, 25 years ago this month. This past week (past month, past year) there have been gobs of events to mark the occasion: special talks, videos, a re-released IMAX movie, panel discussions, banquets, art exhibits, and a video contest. There was even an entire symposium dedicated Hubble’s future through 2020, building on the last 25 years. And so during the symposium, the natural questions amongst astronomers were about its past: where were you when Hubble finally launched? what was your reaction to the whole spherical aberration debacle?

Well. I am currently an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, the science home to Hubble. I am on a team that monitors and calibrates two of the instruments installed / repaired in 2009.  And I have no memory of the delays to Hubble’s launch, or the eventual April 1990 deployment, or the spherical aberration, or any of it. Because it was twenty-five years ago. And twenty-five years ago I was in kindergarten.

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Breaking the Sea Ice

By: | April 29, 2015

A woman in a sweatshirt drives a ship.About the same time I was laid off from my last magazine job, I found out that I’d gotten a gig in the Bering Sea. A photographer, Chris Linder, had a National Science Foundation grant to go on a series of voyages to very cold places and he needed a writer to go with him. He picked me. I was thrilled. The money wasn’t amazing, but the experience was pretty special–six weeks on a Coast Guard icebreaker, the USCGC Healy, crashing in and out of the ice on a research cruise.

The scientists on board were hoping to catch the so-called ice edge bloom, when the ice recedes, the sun’s light first touches the dark Bering Sea waters after the long, icy winter, and algae responds with a bloom. I hoped to recover my reporting and writing mojo after a soul-crushing job experience.

The ship left port on April 3, 2009 and stayed out until the middle of May. Both objectives were met. The scientists managed, by careful monitoring of satellite imagery and chlorophyll levels, to catch the ice edge bloom. I interviewed people and wrote a story every day, whether I felt like it or not, and learned that I still knew how to write. (Whew.)

Best of all, though, was this: Once, I got to drive the ship. Continue reading →

Dreams of Monsters and Coconuts, Airports and Toilets

By: | April 28, 2015
Young Girl Dreaming by Paul Gauguin
Young Girl Dreaming by Paul Gauguin

This is my last regular post for LWON. Thank you, readers, for indulging my ramblings about mushroom ice cream, eyeless crustaceans, and transit-chasing Frenchmen (not to mention my Canadian spelling habits). And thank you, fellow LaWONians, for letting me be part of your wonderful writing community. I’ll miss you guys.

Lately, my dreams have been incredibly boring. A couple weeks ago, I dreamed that I drove my father to the airport so he could catch a midnight flight to Austria. But after wandering through a blurry maze of corridors, I realized that I’d gotten the date wrong, and he missed his plane. (Those midnight flights—they’ll mess you up every time.) In another recent dream, I was enrolled in a cooking class that required the students to prepare a three-course meal for the final exam. However, I had neglected to buy enough ingredients, and all I had was a pie crust and an odd tube of some kind of mashed root vegetable. I squeezed the mush into the pie crust while our teacher warned us that there was no excuse for not making a salad.

Have my dreams always been so tedious? I can’t remember what I dreamed about as a kid, but I do recall reading about other children’s dreams in The Story Girl, a novel by L.M. Montgomery (who also wrote Anne of Green Gables). In one chapter, a group of friends begins keeping “dream books” to record their nocturnal visions. These include reports of seeing “an enormous and hideous lizard… crawl across the roof of the house” and “being chased around the parlour by an ottoman, which made faces”. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | April 25, 2015

IMG_3145April 20 – 24, 2015

Jennifer buys bespoke draperies with a beguiling floral pattern. In a flash of perceptual ambiguity, the flowers turn into baseballs, and now she can’t unsee them.

Erik outlines best practices for your next Lucha Libre bout, and Cameron interviews a former co-worker who has just published a book all about rust.

Cassie’s trip to Mozambique introduces her to mango fly etiquette, which leads her back home to an ingenious irradication effort completed in the 80s against the screwworm. I present five things you might not know about wedding rings – like the fact that you are sprinkling yours wherever you go.

Photo: Jennifer S. Holland