A Royal Pain

By: | June 23, 2011

A lovely young English couple are planning to visit my town in a fortnight, along with 70-odd out-of-town police officers, trucks-full of barricades and a personal hair stylist. As William and Kate’s arrival approaches, I find myself situated as a public servant, so I shan’t venture any opinion at all on Canada’s future with the monarchy. I shall simply offer an objective and, of course, unrelated account of consanguineous unions in European royal history.

All ten current European monarchs — that’s Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Monaco and the Netherlands, for those who haven’t kept track of republican trends — are direct descendants of John William Friso, Prince of Orange, who died in 1711, ten generations ago. This fact understates their actual degree of kinship, however, because the interconnected bloodlines cross much more recently. Most of the European monarchs are also descended from the grandmother of Europe, Queen Victoria of England and from Christian IX of Denmark, both of whose many respective grandchildren – who occupied their thrones during the First World War – married each other so conscientiously their family tree sports the systematic order of a round-robin badminton tournament. Of course, Queen Victoria and her consort Albert were first cousins to begin with, and Victoria passed her hemophilia down to her far-flung grandchildren.

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Guest Post: Remembering Horace Judson

By: | June 22, 2011

In his several books and many articles in magazines and academic journals, Horace Freeland Judson dared to size scientists up, though he wasn’t one. He died on May 6, age 80. He was my teacher and my friend, and I would like to say a few things about his works both to offer tribute and to explicate some of what was significant about the most original science observer of our time. Continue reading →

Delectable Dirt

By: | June 21, 2011
Dirt. It's what's for dinner.

Kids will put anything in their mouths. My aunt, who lived briefly in Hawaii, once found my cousin gnawing on a dead lizard. My childhood tastes were less exotic. I loved dirt.

Eating dirt was forbidden. I was old enough to understand that. But I could. not. help. myself. My mother would often find me next to a houseplant, black streaks covering my mouth and hands. “Have you been eating dirt?” she would ask. I would solemnly shake my head. The perfect crime. Except for that telltale black ring around my mouth.

For me, eating dirt was a phase. I grew out of it. But years later I still felt like a freak. I shouldn’t have. Turns out dirt eating is pretty common. In fact, there’s even a scientific name for the practice: geophagy. Continue reading →

Synthetic biology: Parlor trick, or proof of concept?

By: | June 20, 2011

The first time I heard about bacterial photography, I thought, “Wow, that’s so rad! I’m not sure what they’re gonna use it for, but anyway, it sure is cool!”

The bacterial photography project involved transplanting a light sensor into an Escherichia coli bacterium so that it could take “pictures” in Petri dishes. It sprang from a field called synthetic biology, in which scientists engineer biology to perform new functions.

Here is a sampling of some of the other things that synthetic biologists have done since the bacterial photography project: they’ve made cheese from the bacteria that grow on human skin. They’ve engineered yeast to make lysergic acid, the precursor of the psychedelic drug LSD. They’ve made plants whose leaves change color when they detect explosive chemicals, and bacteria that digest the pesticide Atrazine.

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In Case of Rapture, Head for Poughkeepsie

By: | June 17, 2011
Poughkeepsie, sweet home on the Hudson. iStockphoto.

A few years ago, I interviewed author and social critic James Kunstler about his novel World Made By Hand, his latest portrayal of a post-peak-oil future. Kunstler, as one might expect, had plenty of complaints — about suburbs, cheese doodles, Wal-Mart, the American road trip. But when I mentioned that I’d grown up in the Hudson River town of Poughkeepsie, New York, he perked up.

“Oh!” he said, sounding as if he’d almost cracked a smile.

People from Poughkeepsie are not, to say the least, used to this kind of reaction. Depending on your generation, you may know my hometown from Gene Hackman’s “Pickin’ your feet in Poughkeepsie” rant in The French Connection; from the Lemonheads song; or from the Friends episode “The One With The Girl From Poughkeepsie” (“How great can she be if she’s from Poughkeepsie?”)

If you know Poughkeepsie at all, chances are you don’t ache to return. The name is Wappinger for “the reed-covered lodge by the little-water place,” though a friend of mine translates it as “place of many strip malls.” We once made a decent living making hats, brewing beer, and shipping stuff up and down the Hudson, but those glory days are long over. (One of our most successful industries was whale rendering.) With a chronically lackluster downtown and boring burbs, we have neither urban sophistication nor rural charm. As Hudson Valley folkie Bill Ring puts it, “It’s bigger than a village, but it ain’t quite a city/ and it’s not a place a lot of folks are itching to go.” I love a lot of people in Poughkeepsie, but honestly, I prefer to meet them elsewhere.

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New Person of LWON: Michelle Nijhuis

By: | June 16, 2011

Please welcome Michelle Nijhuis, the newest Person of LWON—and, given her street address, the one least likely to be stalked in the physical world. Michelle seems to spend a great deal of her time winning awards and fellowships, but that’s not why we like her. Rather, it’s because of the moments she sets aside to write evocative, heartfelt stories about conservation and global change and, as often as not, people who are trying to do something good—and perhaps a little nutty—for the world we all share. And that’s just part of why we think she’ll fit in so well.

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Image: Perhaps Michelle’s closest neighbor? From an abandoned house in Foote Fields, Colorado. Photo courtesy of JT Thomas.

Could we make conferences less sucky?

By: | June 16, 2011

I’m not a big fan of conferences. I loathe spending vast stretches of time indoors, especially if it requires planting my butt in uncomfortable chairs and wearing clothes with buttons and shoes that aren’t flip flops. Yet I continue to attend meetings, because they offer opportunities to interact with smart people who are thinking about interesting things.

Earlier this month, I attended two conferences in a single week, and the stark contrast between them got me thinking about why conferences so often suck and how to make them better.

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New Person of LWON: Christie Aschwanden

By: | June 15, 2011
This is what Christie does for fun. Truly. And, yes, that is actually Christie.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing the latest addition to LWON: Christie Aschwanden (ASH-wand-un), a writer who shares not only my fondness for the term “bull honkey,” but also my intense dislike of liars. Yes, we are two peas in a pod. Except Christie, a serious athlete and professional ski racer, is really buff. You should see her biceps. They are really impressive.

Christie, a contributing editor at Runner’s World, is also one hell of an accomplished writer. And that’s why we’re so happy she has agreed to join us. Her articles—including an award-winning story about an Agent Orange remediation project in Vietnam’s central highlands—have appeared in more than 50 publications, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Men’s Journal, Slate, NPR, Mother Jones . . . I could keep going. Instead, I’ll let you get the full scoop by visiting her Web site.

Among a small circle of freelancers, Christie is known not only for her phenomenal writing, but also for the incredibly odd press releases she receives—press releases with titles like “Breasts, Buttocks and The Big Brain” or “NASA Threatens NASA Scientist.” And we all know that bizarre press releases make great fodder for blog posts. (Hint hint.) Welcome, Christie!

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Photo by JT Thomas.