FROM BIRD DROPPINGS TO HOLIDAY KISSES
WHAT A GREAT HEADLINE FROM NPR to Scott Neuman’s“How We Ended Up Under the Mistletoe,”December 17, 2025. Here are tidbits gleaned from this appealing etymological essay. Origins. Scott Neuman describes, … Continue reading
SMART DUMMIES PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE DISCUSSED THE HISTORY OF AUTOMOTIVE TEST DUMMIES. Today in Part 2, NPR’s Camila Domonoske tours Humanetics, a major supplier of ATDs. Video from YouTube via NPR. A Humanetics … Continue reading
SMART DUMMIES PART 1
AUTOMOTIVE CRASH TEST DUMMIES ARE SMARTER than their real-life counterparts. Unlike humans, their memories retain scads of data from sensors throughout their bodies. Their materials and contours are engineered to … Continue reading
MAINTAINING BALANCE—AND MEMORY
TWO RECENT EVENTS—ONE A NEWSPAPER GUEST ESSAY, THE OTHER PURELY PERSONAL, resonate with “An Uneven Pendulum,” SimanaitisSays, December 7, 2025. E.J. Dionne Jr. offers “Trump Confronts a Backlash of the … Continue reading
ON AUTOMOTIVE PRICES (AND, ALAS, LOAN DELINQUENCIES)—PITY GEN Z
A RECENT AUTOMOTIVE NEWS ARTICLE by Paige Hodder describes, “Gen Z Car Buyers Use Research, Digital Tools to Make F&I Deals,” December 1, 2025. (F&I, by the way, is auto … Continue reading
A NEW INAMORATA PART 2
YESTERDAY WE BEGAN MY APPRECIATION of Margaret Atwood, her memoir Book of Lives, and its two articles in The New York Times “100 Notable Books of 2025.” Today in Part … Continue reading
A NEW INAMORATA PART 1
AT MY AGE? NO MATTER, BECAUSE SHE’S 85. And my infatuation is an intellectual one, based upon my reading about Margaret Atwood in several articles in “100 Notable Books of … Continue reading
AND NOW FONTGATE!?!
WHAT WITH TRUMP SEEMINGLY COMMITTING WAR CRIMES in the Caribbean, Putin elbowing his way into Western Europe, unease still exising in Gaza and the West Bank, not to say health … Continue reading
CHERNOBYL MOULD MAY THRIVE ON RADIATION
THE HORRIFIC DISASTER OF CHERNOBYL may have a beneficial mouldy lining—thanks to the relatively recent discovery of radiotrophism. Just as plants thrive from the sun through photosynthesis, some moulds have … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 
RFK JR., SCIENCE, AND THE ATLANTIC PART 1
I WAS DISTURBED TO SEE THE ATLANTIC’S JANUARY 2026 COVER BLURB “The Most Powerful Man in Science” accompanying a beatified image of a bead-fondling Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is this … Continue reading →