The Last Word On Nothing

I like to run this post on Memorial Day (the first version ran May 28, 2012) because when I think about soldiers and wars and Memorial Day, I think about Uncle Bundy. He was awfully opinionated and excessively direct but I admired him greatly and listened when he talked. Not he ever talked about the […] The post Uncle Bundy and the Technically Sweet appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

Mom spreads maps over the dining room table. They’re oldish, not ancient, but the home I see in them is not the home I know. They are all of Colorado—mostly cities at the nexus of Rocky Mountains and High Plains, 40, 50, 60 years ago. The outpost of Ward, a funky old mining town up […] The post Leaving / Imprints appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

The comb was found in a trash pile, what the archeologists call a midden, not far above the sea and just outside the remains of a longhouse. From the sit of the house and the site of the midden we know it was an easy toss: you could practically step outside and hurl food scraps, […] The post Haircare in the Viking Age appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

My kid is on his way to university this year, and it’s hard not to get swept into doomscrolling opinion pieces. AI is going to take over everything and there will be no entry level jobs left. Did I do the wrong thing by encouraging my child’s interest in knowledge work? Should I have nudged […] The post Written in the Stars appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

Have you noticed Mar-a-Lago face popping up in pop culture? It’s freaky. Certain conservative women and billionaires’ second wives—people who started out looking perfectly fine—now have puffy lips, exaggerated cheeks, and eyes that look perpetually surprised. I finally figured out what they remind me of: marionettes. They look like marionettes. With control-me, make-me-dance strings definitely [……

Over the last decade as my obsession with jumping spiders has grown, I’ve often wondered why some most people hate spiders. What is it about spiders that makes them particularly aversive? At first I was mostly just curious, but my conversations with arachnologists convinced me this question is actually important. Many researchers struggle to find […] The post Why do people hate spiders? appeared …

This was first posted on November 17, 2017. The latest explanation of gamma ray bursts are that they’re massive stars going supernovae and collapsing immediately to black holes and in the process, aiming high-intensity jets at our skies. They’re still the brightest things in the universe, the brightness of a trillion suns, and they last […] The post Loving Explosions appeared first on The Last Wo…

More snow finally came on Tuesday night, two months later than it was supposed to finally come, and it is too late, but it is better than nothing. That’s what everyone is saying. “I’m so grateful for the moisture.” “I hope the flowers I covered will make it.” “I’m happy it snowed, but I do […] The post Too Little, Too Late, But Better Late Than Never? appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

The world is a lot right now, so I want to suggest that you find some little delights to keep your spirits up. Perhaps start with birds. (And if that doesn’t work, there are always dogs.) Last May, I wrote about how I’d become a bird spy. A year later, I’m still obsessed with my […] The post Hello Birdie appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

See those little round plants? The flat ones? They’re ferns. Ferns! Did you even know ferns came like that? Not a frond in sight? Little flat discs? Well, they do! They grow in many, many wet places in Japan, often among the wee mosses and lichens, which means I’d seen them for a long time […] The post Snapshot: Funny little ferns appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

Hey Alexa, how long can a beaver hold its breath? I’m asking because I was kayaking last night at Totier Creek off the James River and I spotted a beaver swimming from one bank to another, his little head sticking up like a thumb and his body and paddle of a tail cutting a V […] The post Standing at the Shoreline appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

The Friday before spring break, the handful of students who haven’t cut out early or taken off for Eid are sharing some of their favorite new words gleaned from their independent reading: black hole, sound barrier, bookies, puppets, dime, wrist, Wyoming, information. We talk about what each of these mean, write sentences, consider what new […] The post Guest Post: Chemistry & the Students from El…

For years, we’d been trying to entice two kiwi vines to create some shade over the picnic table in the backyard. We gave them questionable water during a drought, fenced them off from predatory puppies and toddlers. As the years passed, they just looked sadder and sadder. Finally, we dug them up and put in […] The post Passion Fruit Diplomacy appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

Last post, I wrote about fish crows, a bird of very few words. A pair of them will be flying along and one says, “krokk;” and after a bit, the other says “krokk” and maybe adds another “krokk” or not; and that’s it, end of conversation. Fish crows are, like all crows, famously social. And […] The post Low Info appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

On a spring day three years ago, the river climbed out of its banks. Unseasonable heat and heavy rain had hit the snowpack high in the mountains, sending a winter’s worth of meltwater in a pulse down the tributaries, into the mainstem, and spilling across the valley floor. Work seemed unlikely under these circumstances, so […] The post Watch the grass grow appeared first on The Last Word On Nothi…

Caribou collar compilation provided by the National Park Service. Last week I traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska, for work. Though the melt had begun, plenty of snow still blanketed the ground and thick rafts of ice clotted the rivers. It had been a big winter in the area, the coldest on record, with 31 days at […] The post Migrations appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

This post originally ran in 2015. A commenter at the time had an intriguing suggestion for the solution, which I have added below! Investigative journalists seem awfully glamorous – delving into mysteries and catching those liars at their game. Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the aptitudes involved, so I steer clear of it. But […] The post A Baffling Curio appeared first on The Last Word On No…

Like many of you, I’m guessing, I’d rather read a good book than go to a party. A room full of other people? Some of them strangers? That you have to talk to? Shudder.  But after the initial awkwardness of making sure you’re at the right location (do I knock or just walk in?), finding […] The post Messy Hospitality, Party Ideas, and Icebreakers appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

Look at this worm. Behold it! Is it not the most spectacular worm you have ever seen? If you’re a loyal reader of this space, you saw this exact worm a week or so ago, in my post about Japanese botanist Tomitaro Makino and some of the plants he grew up around. That was the […] The post What a spectacular worm appeared first on The Last Word On Nothing .

My family spent this spring break in Costa Rica. We went, of course, for the wildlife. Unfortunately, so did everyone else. Manuel Antonio National Park, on the Pacific coast, is one of the prime spots for seeing biodiversity. I had been there before nearly two decades ago, but friends warned me that it had changed. […] The post The tiniest frogs . . . eeee! appeared first on The Last Word On Not…