Simanaitis Says

On cars, old, new and future; science & technology; vintage airplanes, computer flight simulation of them; Sherlockiana; our English language; travel; and other stuff

Monthly Archives: April, 2015

CLEARING THE FUEL-CELL AIR

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’ve been enthusiastic about automobile fuel-cell propulsion since the early 1990s when I learned about this means of producing electric energy. Not that my enthusiasm has been universally … Continue reading

April 19, 2015 · 1 Comment

IT’S GOOD TO BE HOME

“SHOW ME a person’s home,” someone or other must have said, “and I’ll tell you who that person is.” Homes can be modest or grand, elegantly traditional or jarringly post-modern. … Continue reading

April 18, 2015 · Leave a comment

DOMINGUEZ HILL 1910—AMERICA’S FIRST AIR MEET

AIRLINE PASSENGERS using LAX, Los Angeles’s major airport, may not realize it, but they’re near historic ground in pioneer aviation. The first air meet in the U.S. took place January 10 – 20, … Continue reading

April 17, 2015 · Leave a comment

POLITICAL NAME-CALLING

THE BBC World Service reported today a British Liberal Party spokesman said that political coalition could “give the Conservative Party a heart and Labour a brain.” Being an outsider to the … Continue reading

April 16, 2015 · 2 Comments

FIAT’S MOUSE—THE 500 TOPOLINO

THE FAME of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse gave a name to one of the world’s most charming automobiles, the Fiat 500 Topolino (Italian: Little Mouse, and Mickey’s nickname there). The … Continue reading

April 15, 2015 · 1 Comment

MY NATION—AND I MEAN MINE: MICROCON 2015

FROM TIME to time, people complain that they could do a better job of running things than the incumbent politicos. And, for a select few, they do just that. These … Continue reading

April 12, 2015 · Leave a comment

BROOKLANDS AERO

IT WAS like having the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk nestled in the infield of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Brooklands, 25 miles southwest of central London, 12 miles south of Heathrow … Continue reading

April 11, 2015 · 3 Comments

SHORT RIDE IN A FORMULA FORD

SIRIUSXM SATELLITE radio’s Symphony Hall channel recently featured Short Ride in a Fast Machine, a fanfare for orchestra by modern composer John Adams. I immediately thought of my brief but … Continue reading

April 10, 2015 · 1 Comment

SHERLOCKIAN WOMEN

IT’S GOOD fun researching Sherlock Holmes through the chronicles of Dr. John H. Watson as represented by his literary agent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. At this website, for instance, I’ve … Continue reading

April 8, 2015 · Leave a comment

AND THAT MEANS….

LATELY, RESEARCHING one thing and another, I’ve been enjoying Google Translate. This online tool supports 90 languages as either input source or translated target. Google Translate says that during 2013 … Continue reading

April 6, 2015 · Leave a comment