The Last Word

By: | June 29, 2013
Not really Father-of-the-Year material.
Not really Father-of-the-Year material.

June 24 – 28

In light of all that happened this week, Erik looked at what the animal kingdom teaches us about being gay, and wonders why we insist on looking to the animal kingdom for lessons at all.

So that mermaids show was a hoax, but Roberta had some good news about real mermaids.

The next Big One — whether it’s sneeze-able bird flu or some horrible new bat disease that infects humans — will likely come to you courtesy of the best person you know, says Jessa.

I explained why I will never sit comfortably again.

And we reposted one of LWON’s classic posts, Cassie’s rumination on “Hubble moments.”

 

 

Watching your back

By: | June 28, 2013

shutterstock_93649423Half a lifetime bent over peering into people’s mouths had left Martha Podleschak with spine problems.

One of the job requirements for a dentist is a constant, slightly sideways forward tilt. According to her x-ray technician, Podleschak’s particular leftward lean had compressed the discs between her vertebrae, causing a pattern of extreme wear on the left. By the time she was 40, the pain was constant and unbearable and forced her into early retirement. Desperate for relief, Podleschak tried several avenues. After yoga proved unsuccessful, she went to a chiropractor. He broke her neck.

She spent the next 18 months in a neck cast. When it came off, she was partially paralyzed and the pain was far worse. There was no position she could lie, sit or stand in that was not excruciating. The only way she could sleep was by injecting narcotics. The wheelchair that she’d probably be committed to for the rest of her life was on its way. Continue reading →

The True Mermaids

By: | June 27, 2013

Mermaid ladiesOne night in May, I idly watched a scene from a rerun of an Animal Planet show called Mermaids: The Body Found. An affable-looking biomechanics researcher named Stephen Pearsall was recounting an analysis of a mysterious marine mammal carcass. In what appeared to be a dramatic re-enactment, the camera zoomed in on torn animal tissue, then showed men in lab coats staring at a CT scan of the creature.

“I realized that this was like no tail we had ever seen before,” said Dr. Pearsall. “It became clear that this creature once walked on two legs. And there is only one animal that walks upright on two legs.”

Cut to another scientist, Rebecca Davis, who had studied the animal’s bones. “Hands,” she said. “They were hands.”

What the hell? I thought. Has Animal Planet found some fringe scientists who think they’ve discovered mermaids? Continue reading →

How Natural is Homosexuality?

By: | June 26, 2013

shutterstock_59303527-500x333Today, in light of gay pride month and all the gay marriage business all over the news, I thought it might be time we at LWON weigh in on this most hot-button of issues. We look to biology to explain so much about how we interact and why we act how we do. But what does it have to say about rainbow flags, Suburus, and men’s cutoff jeans? Continue reading →

Bless the Superspreaders

By: | June 25, 2013

superspreader

We were a ragtag bunch at the KyoRyuKan theatre in the year 2000, all washed up there for different reasons. One man had been a master kimono maker before his building burned down and he lost everything, including all of his precious silks. Another man arrived promptly at nine every morning to ride out the work day – he had lost his job and wasn’t ready to tell his family. The Butoh teacher was an outlier in her post-Hiroshima dance discipline. While Butoh hard-liners stripped naked and painted themselves white, pulling grotesque faces of agony, she preferred to prowl beautifully like a cat.

But the reason we were all there was Peter Golightly. Arrived in Japan a decade previously, the American had picked up polio in India but recovered unexpectedly and decided to become a dancer and generalized entertainer. What he lacked in elite training he made up in enthusiasm. The same amateur passion inspired the community he led, and this was liberating for me, who had neither experience nor aptitude for anything artistic.

Continue reading →

Redux: Embracing My Hubble Moments

By: | June 24, 2013

hubble 500x369LWON loves this 10/20/2011 post and is reprinting it, feeling that we’re always at any time just a minute away from our own Hubble moments.

In 2006, when I was in graduate school for science writing, one of my professors brought in an astronomer to talk about his exoplanet discoveries (just in case you don’t know, exoplanets are planets outside our solar system). We were supposed to listen to Dr. Astronomer’s talk, ask a few questions, call some scientists for outside comments, and then write a news story. Full disclosure here: I don’t care one whit about astronomy. I never have. Oh sure, I can walk you through the planets in our solar system. And I know something about stars and galaxies. But beyond that, I’m kind of at a loss.

Dr. Astronomer had made his discoveries using the Hubble Telescope and, as he talked, it slowly dawned on me that this telescope he was talking about, this Hubble, is in space. My mind was officially blown. We put a goddamn telescope in SPACE! Holy. Effing. News peg. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | June 22, 2013

wikimedia-monarch-Dreamdan-270x179June 17 – 21

“I think girls very much do want to be JASONs and they want to be in DARPA, they just don’t always know it, so we need to get them to read about it.”  This week, Ann asked defense journalism powerhouse Sharon Weinberger to add her two cents to the ongoing LWON conversation about women and science journalism.

Cameron waited for the butterflies to emerge.

Richard took a poke at explaining the history of relativity, which “has the reputation of being nearly impenetrable,” and why Einstein was the one who got credit for it.

Christie told us why the best place to look while watching a beautiful sunset is behind you.

And Michelle left us with this conversation piece: “Two weeks ago, for the first time in 15 years, I flushed the toilet inside my house.”

Relativity for Preschoolers

By: | June 21, 2013

evan-birthday-invite 500x357“If, for example, I say that ‘the train arrives here at 7 o’clock,’ that means, more or less, ‘the pointing of the small hand of my clock to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events.'”                                                       –Albert Einstein

The special theory of relativity has the reputation of being nearly impenetrable, as opposed to the general theory of relativity, which has the reputation of being wholly impenetrable. But Albert Einstein had a knack for explaining complex ideas: Make them simple enough that even a child could understand them. And a child, in this case, was anyone old enough to know what the time is when the small hand is pointing precisely to the 7.
Continue reading →