GETTING HEP—NUMERICALLY
WHAT WITH POPE LEO XIV ACKNOWLEDGING 6-7 and all of us knowing 86-47, this got me interested in getting hep numerically. I cite Smoky Hill Museum for its “1920s Slang” … Continue reading
MORE ON HOLMES’ BOSWELL
IT IS A CHARMING CONCEIT THAT DR. JOHN H. WATSON was actually the biographer of the world’s first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was merely Watson’s literary … Continue reading
TRUMP—AND TWO MEANINGS OF THE WORD “PITCH” PART 2
SIMON SKINNER GAVE US AN INFORMATIVE INTRODUCTION to international football with his LRB “ ‘I Wouldn’t Pay It Either’ ” book review of Jonathan Wilson’s The Power and the Glory: … Continue reading
TRUMP—AND TWO MEANINGS OF THE WORD “PITCH” PART 1
THIS TALE WAS PROMPTED INITIALLY BY Simon Skinner’s giant (15,601 words!) “ ‘I Wouldn’t Pay It Either,’ ” his June 25, 2026, London Review of Books review of Jonathan Wilson’s … Continue reading
REALITY 101 PART 2
YESTERDAY WE CALLED FOR REALITY ASSESSMENTS of warfare and the crypto meme scam. Today in Part 2, Mother Nature fact-checks Trump’s climate con, her weather cancels his ego games, and, … Continue reading
REALITY 101 PART 1
SO MANY RECENT TRAGEDIES MIGHT HAVE BEEN AVOIDED with a course in Reality 101. Its syllabus would include basics of elementary history, economics, science, and medicine. In Parts 1 and … Continue reading
DR. ZEYNEP TUFEKCI CLARIFIES A.I.
AS CONFIRMED BY HER APPEARANCES AT THIS WEBSITE (see “Plato, The Internet, Education, and A.I.,” December 17, 2022; “Grok Goes Bonkers,” May 23, 2025; and “Deepfake—And Our Resulting Loss of … Continue reading
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!
THIS, OF COURSE, IS THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of the ongoing political-social experiment defining the United States of America. Here are tidbits gleaned from the past—and from the present—on this occasion. … Continue reading
VIEWS FROM MCGUFFEY ECLECTIC READERS, SOME EVEN PROGRESSIVE PART 1
THE BROTHERS WILLIAM HOLMES AND ALEXANDER HAMILTON MCGUFFEY edited a series of Readers for grades 1-6. As noted by Wikipedia, these Eclectic Readers “were widely used as textbooks in American … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 
VIEWS FROM MCGUFFEY ECLECTIC READERS, SOME EVEN PROGRESSIVE PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE STARTED STUDY OF MCGUFFEY’S ECLECTIC READERS, USING its annotated version edited by Stanley W. Lindberg. Today in Part 2 we continue with a lesson that’s a fundamental one … Continue reading →