"Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing" - Victor Hugo
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Two days after I moved with my family to the middle of Alaska I learned about the earthquakes. Every 15 minutes or so, monitoring stations in the state detect one. Most aren’t large, or even felt far beyond their epicenters. Some begin far out to sea and appear as barely more than a tiny spike […] The post Tremors appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .
Debunking Hollywood is LWON’s very occasional series that takes a hard science look at common TV and movie tropes. This instalment originally appeared in August 2017. Nothing says interstellar travel like a hibernation pod. The heroes of the 2016 holiday blockbuster Passengers, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, embark on a century-long journey to an planet […] The post Debunking…
The first part of knowledge is often identifying, categorizing, and naming things. Humans are great at categorizing. But insistence on categories can be pathological, as with gender essentialism. The post Categorically Yes … and No appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .
We were walking past a line of shorebirds on the harbor’s breakwater when my son stopped me and pointed. “Does that bird only have one leg?” About two dozen black turnstones — I didn’t recognize them at the time, I had to use All About Birds later — faced into the wind, broadside to the […] The post Perfect Things appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .
Subject: Final reminders Dear Nature Wonder Wishing Family, We’re so excited to have your child with us at Nature Wonder Wishing Camp next week. Please make sure that you read the parent guidebook and the camp code of conduct. You can find those documents in an email we sent six months ago that does not […] The post Happy Final Weeks of Summer Camp (to all who celebrate) appeared first on The Last…
Erling Haaland, the cool Norwegian soccer player, has a pretty fun and slightly unhinged social media presence. During the World Cup, a clip from his Instagram account resurfaced where he claimed, “Just raw dogged a 7 hour flight. No phone, no sleep, no water, no food. Only map. #easy” I have a confession: I, too, […] The post The Mountains that Matter Most appeared first on The Last Word On…
On May 10, I leave my house in northern Washington state just after dawn. I drive alone along a braided river, over sagebrush plateaus, and through fields of golden flowers. Then one plane across the Cascades, and another across the Rockies, to finally land in my my childhood home in Colorado. I’ve come to stand […] The post Look up appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .
Birds of the District of Columbia used to be a weird little secret at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, an exhibit I often had all to myself – a bunch of taxidermied birds in old-school wood and glass cases, lining the hallway around the basement auditorium. On a recent visit to the museum, […] The post Birds of the District of Columbia appeared first on The Last Word On…
I’ve been yammering on here at LWON for long enough now that it’s time for readers to get to know me a little more intimately. That means some introductions are in order. We’ll start strong with my buddy Gus, the Skittle-size hemangioma spooning my liver. As you can imagine, this bundle of excess blood vessels […] The post The Round of Introductions You Didn’t Ask For appeared first on The Last…
My mom watering her flowers as a wildfire approaches I’m helping my mom evacuate, the air getting harder to breathe in this charred perfume, 23 square miles of conifers and oakbrush gone up in flames several miles away. Last report, the fire was about to crest the ridge at 10,000 feet where the front line […] The post One Damn Thing After Another appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .
