The Smoking Hills

By: | December 6, 2012

In 1850, British Captain Robert McClure and his crew ventured in the Investigator to the Arctic, with a walrus-shaped figurehead leading the way in search of the lost Franklin expedition. Unlike ill-fated Franklin, McClure employed an Inuit translator and was able to engage meaningfully with coastal communities along the Arctic Ocean. The team found and completed the Northwest Passage – their abandoned ship, with its bounty of metal salvage, would later represent a turning point in the material culture of the Coppermine Inuit – but not before observing a curious phenomenon, which McClure related in his dispatches:

The water was deep, eighty-four fathoms being obtained, only four miles off shore, when near the mouth of the Horton River. On the 4th large fires were seen on shore, and at first supposed to be lighted by the natives to attract attention. Mr. Mierching, however, questioned such extravagance in fuel being committed by Esquimaux, and on the next day (Sept. 5), when it happened to be calm with rain, Lieutenant Gurney Cresswell, Doctor Armstrong, and some others, were sent to examine the spot Continue reading →

Dance Party!

By: | December 5, 2012

I miss dancing. One of my favorite activities as a kid was dropping the needle on our Hooked On Classics record and letting loose across the living room’s faded oriental rug. Later, I danced with gusto in church pageants, whether in charming second-grade square dances or hippie-esque liturgical dances that involved wearing leotards and waving ribbons.

Sometime between then and now, I’ve put away my dancing shoes. Hooked on Classics records and accompanying choreography were replaced with Too Short tapes, DJ Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff CDs, and odd head-bobbing movements. I’ve certainly mocked liturgical dancing. I haven’t gotten anywhere near Gangnam Style.

Continue reading →

Guest Post: Confession of a Climate Coward

By: | December 4, 2012

I recently learned that my colleagues think I am a coward. And even more recently, I learned that I might agree with them.

It all began in 2007. That was a magic year for science writers. That was the year the IPCC released its crushing assessment on climate change, just after the surprise hit of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. It was amazing – the world was talking about carbon dioxide and everyone was listening to scientists. Rationality and logic were leading the debate for once and were – dare I say it – cool. It was like all the jocks and the cheerleaders suddenly turned to the kid with long greasy hair, Firefly t-shirt, and They Might Be Giants on his iPod (you know who you are) and said, “please tell us what you think!” Continue reading →

DIY Space Flight

By: | December 3, 2012

Virgin Galactic describes astronauts as “the world’s most exclusive club.” I know this because I recently downloaded the company’s brochure, and spent many happy minutes fantasizing about what it would be like to lay down $200,000 and take out a membership. Virgin Galactic, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is the space tourism company dreamt up by Sir Richard Branson, the former record-store owner who has racked up such a vast personal fortune that he is now ranked the fourth wealthiest person in the UK.

Branson wants spaceflight to be a pleasant, zenlike experience—rather like a supersonic spa. Banished are the days of adrenalin-infused terror when NASA strapped husky young farm boys to the back of faulty rockets. The Virgin Galactic journey begins in serenity in the New Mexico desert, in a spaceport designed by the architectural firm of Foster + Partners (the name says it all).  Continue reading →

Sunday Stories

By: | December 2, 2012


For your Sunday-reading pleasure, a few stories that the people of LWON loved this week. In no particular order:

Christie:
For sale: The North Fork Valley, by Sarah Gilman, High Country News

Gilman Looks at the proposed fracking in her backyard and decides that this technology is “not just the machinery of corporate greed – it’s the machinery of our collective and vast energy appetite.”

Nature‘s Sexism, by the editors of Nature

Nature finds signs of sexism in its publishing record and pledges to do something about it.

The Pseudoscience of SkyMall, by Rebecca Watson, Slate

Heather:
Your Smartphone’s Dirty, Radioactive Secret, by Kiera Butler, Mother Jones

A really superb piece of environmental reporting on the toxic innards of our iPhones and where they come from.

Virginia:
Inside the Mansion—and Mind—of Kim Dotcom, the Most Wanted Man on the Net, by Charles Graeber, Wired

If you’re too busy to read it, just scroll down and look at the photos of this guy’s unbelievable New Zealand palace. I love the story for its pacing, but also for all of the you’re-kidding-me details about the life of the super-rich.

Ann:
First we get proof of heaven; now the secret of immortality, by Paul Raeburn, KSJ Tracker

Paul Raeburn makes mincemeat of today’s New York Times Magazine cover story, written by a novelist, on immortal jellyfish. Maybe the novelist should be allowed his discursiveness, but surely not his credulity.

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Abandoned oil rig from Shutterstock

The Last Word

By: | December 1, 2012

26 – 30 November

This week, Heather reveals the man behind the jade mask.

932,891,133 galaxies, over a 14,555-square degree patch of the sky, going 3 billion years back into a universe that’s 13.6 billion years old. You can’t comprehend numbers like these, but Ann tells you how to feel them.

How big a role does your brain play in physical endurance? Cassie the marathon woman updates us on the latest research.

Squirrel physics. And snake physics. That’s all you need to know.

Ann tells Abstruse Goose that the real party starts when the people go away, under the light of Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix and Saiph.

Oh and we started a new thing: Sunday stories. A weekly roundup in which we direct you to our favourite bits of the internet.

 

 

The Mind of a Marathoner

By: | November 30, 2012

Last month I mentioned that I was training for my first marathon. Training was tough, but I was doggedly following the plan. Then, less than a week before my marathon debut, Superstorm Sandy hit New York. Floodwaters filled subway tunnels and homes, and strong winds toppled power lines and trees. Roughly 750,000 New Yorkers lost power. In the wake of the storm, Mayor Bloomberg maintained that the race would go on. He pointed out that the marathon would be symbol of New York’s resilience. But the backlash grew, and ultimately Bloomberg caved. Just 42 hours before the first wave of runners was set to cross the Verrazano Bridge, the race was cancelled.

I was devastated, but also relieved. Now I don’t have to run the damn thing, I thought. But then I came to my senses: Oh right. Running the damn thing was the whole point. So I signed up for another marathon: the 9 1/2th Potomac River Run.

I could go on an on about how miserable that race was. On and on and on. The course was an out-and-back and out-and-back, meaning I ran the same stretch of wooded path four times. The last leg was torture. As I rounded each bend, I expected to see the finish line. Instead I saw more wooded trail. The trees all looked the same, and with no mile markers I lost all sense of how far I had come or how far I had yet to go. Around mile 24 great hiccuping sobs overtook me. I truly believed that I would never reach the end. The finish line seemed less like a physical place and more like a metaphor for total mental anguish. I interspersed short bouts of running with increasingly long bouts of walking. Eventually I finished, but I wasn’t triumphant. I saw my husband and burst into tears.

Lots of people run marathons and most of them don’t end up weeping, so clearly my experience is not representative. But it reminded me of just how much of a mental game endurance running is. Yes, I was physically exhausted. Yes, my knee ached and my blistered toes throbbed. But it was my weepy, terrified brain that was my undoing. My body could have run that entire race without walking. My body could have done it quicker. But my stubborn-ass brain felt so sorry for itself I could barely hobble.  Continue reading →

Redux: Squirrel & Snake Physics

By: | November 29, 2012

This was originally posted June 8, 2010 and probably ten people read it.  I hope you don’t mind my running it again.  It reminds me of my favorite Abstruse Goose.  The picture’s a little alarming, but justly so.

I had two trees in the front yard, and I’d watch the squirrels jump between them, across maybe a four-foot gap, and they did it at speed.  They’d race out along the branch to its spindly end and the instant it bent under their weight, they’d go airborne and land on the other tree’s spindly end-branch, no hesitation, no wobble, no recovery, a fraction of a second, then tear down the next branch.

Squirrels – this is well-known – have tiny little brains specially evolved for this.  They put the altitude of the starting point, the altitude of the target point, the distance between the points, air resistance, squirrel velocity, and the acceleration due to gravity into a kinematics equation that accounts for all three dimensions and probably contains some integrals and derivatives and for all I know, square roots.  They solve the equation at the split second of the jump and they always nail it. Continue reading →