Surveying the tree of life, with envy (Or, why can’t a boy be more like a … copepod?)

By: | March 5, 2012

A few recent experiences in the realm of potty training have me thinking about the shortcomings of the human machine. Evolution, for the most part, has been kind to us. But the intelligent designer was missing in action, apparently, when it came time to assign our powers of excretion and elimination.

The fish and birds have it easiest, I suppose—combining liquid and solid wastes into a single stream just makes sense, and whether your medium of movement is water or air, each free-flowing deposit drops or washes away clean.

Not so with the human toddler, a remarkable creature seemingly capable of shitting its own weight on a daily basis. And save me, someone please, from the rivers of urine. I love my son, but does he have to be so hard to keep clean and dry? If only he’d been born more like one of those desert lizards, the ones that have done away with liquid waste altogether, secreting solid dabs of uric acid instead.

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The Last Word

By: | March 3, 2012

Feb 27 – March 2

This week, Richard wondered who explores in a world that no longer has undiscovered country

Michelle considered the people who are lured by open, arid landscapes, even as the land tries its best to shake them off

Christie explored the ongoing consequences of Agent Orange in Viet Nam, and the politics that continue to steamroll scientific consensus of what really happened

Heather’s reminder that, in Egyptology,  as in life,  one man’s loss is another man’s gain was so good the first time that we ran it again this week

And Abstruse Goose explored the profound likelihood of coincidences.

See you back here Monday, everyone. Have a lovely weekend.

Leaving a Mark

By: | March 2, 2012

“Because it’s there.”

Not good enough.

The traditional explanation for our species’ imperative to go to the ends of the earth no longer holds, and it hasn’t held for a long time. An isolated population or two might still be lurking out there, somewhere, in a jungle or on an ice floe, harboring a “Because it’s there” impulse—though, if so, they haven’t done a very good job of acting on it. But for the rest of us, it would be difficult to find a place on the surface of the Earth that’s not terra cognita.

I’ve found myself thinking about the ends of the earth lately as I’ve been writing an essay for a book of photographs by the New Zealand photographer Anne Noble. Anne and I were both recipients of an Antarctic Artists and Writers Program grant from the National Science Foundation in 2008. My grant led to a chapter in my book The 4 Percent Universe, a magazine article, and a couple of LWON posts. Anne’s grant is leading her to a suite of three books. The first, Ice Blink (coming in April), juxtaposes images of genuine Antarctic environments with images of artificial ones, such as installations at museums and aquariums. The second book—the one for which I am writing the essay—captures the human imprint on Antarctica, including the examples from the South Pole that accompany this post.

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Into the Big Empty

By: | March 1, 2012

I grew up in the Hudson Valley of New York State, and went to college in western Oregon — both beautiful places, beloved by many. But I never knew what it was to love a place until I spent a college summer in southern Utah, where I worked as a field tech on a wildlife research project. The red rocks, the blue sky, the dry, quiet air, the weather building on the horizon — why had no one told me this place existed? I was a goner.

Ever since that first Utah summer, now close to 20 years ago, I’ve lived in places that remind me of it. I’ve come to appreciate not only desert landscapes, but also the people who hang on in them, even as the land tries its best to shake them off. Only once has my love of the Big Empty wavered: When I had a bout of postpartum depression, the arid Colorado mesa top around my house turned monochromatic, suddenly choked with weeds and crumbling to dust. This is how other people see it, I thought. When the depression lifted, the beauty came back, and stayed.

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I don’t know why the caged girl screams

By: | February 29, 2012

 

They called her the girl in the cage. “How about her?” the Vietnamese official asked, flipping the book to an image of a girl crouched behind bars. The thick album in front of me featured photographs and short bios of purported Agent Orange victims. There was the boy with no arms, the girl with the squished head and eerie, enlarged eyes, and dozens of other kids with heart-breaking birth defects. Neatly dressed members of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin were offering these children to me like they were shoes in a catalog. It was 2007, and I was in Vietnam to report on the environmental consequences of the conflict the Vietnamese call the American War.

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Redux: The Embalmer’s Fingerprints

By: | February 28, 2012

Sometime in the winter of  1907 and 1908,  an American researcher found a curious assortment of objects lying in a small pit in the Valley of the Kings. Theodore Davis, like many Egyptologists of the day,  was looking for large, grand things, preferably royal tombs. So when he and his workers dug up several jars filled with linen bandages, worn kerchiefs,  broken pottery,  splintered animal bones, bits of dried mud, and collars made of faded dried flowers,  he immediately set them aside and resumed digging.

Davis thought he had found scraps from a poor man’s grave.  In fact,  he and his team had excavated all the leftovers from Tutankhamun’s  spectacular funeral in 1323 B.C. Continue reading →

Abstruse Goose: Red Letter Date

By: | February 27, 2012

I don’t have anything to add, except that I remember the day I learned that being where I was at that exact minute was highly improbable.  I mean, I was there, right then, I was 100 percent probable.  But if I’d calculated it ahead of time I’d have been as AG says, 0.000312 or something.  So I gave up on probability.

http://abstrusegoose.com/431

The Last Word

By: | February 25, 2012

February 20 – 24

This week, Michelle bestowed upon a grateful universe the phrase “probably unpleasant but non-lethal chipmunk ear punches”

Cassie wept as a doctor sang to her awkwardly in Spanish

Ann showed us that up close, cosmological dark matter looks like poppies

Tom found the sole heir to They Might Be Giants’ science song dynasty

And Ginny channeled Joan Miro to explain, in beautiful surrealist anime, how fantastic lengths of DNA manage to coil themselves into an impossibly tiny nucleus.

Extra credit: “Before you go off to start building your apocalyptic weapon, do bear in mind two things.”

Have an awesome weekend, everyone! See you on Monday!