DRIVING A PARISIAN TAXICAB
LISTENING TO Gershwin’s wonderful American in Paris, complete with its taxi horns, brought back memories of my stint as a Parisian taxicab driver. It was in the 1980s. Auto journalist … Continue reading
GUILTY—OR INNOCENT—BY A HAIRSBREADTH
FORENSICS CAN BE used to prove guilt—or innocence. Studies of tobacco ash and “footsteps” enhanced the reputation of Sherlock Holmes in the late 19th century. For example, his Upon the … Continue reading
CLEARING INNES IRELAND’S NAME
GRAND PRIX driver and R&T contributor Innes Ireland was larger than life. He was also a good friend, even before I cleared his name with the City of Needles, County … Continue reading
AN EDITOR’S DELIGHT—AND A DISCLOSURE
RESEARCHING AND COMPOSING SimanaitisSays.com is great fun. As the dotty old woman said, “I never know quite what I’m going to say until I say it.” And so it is … Continue reading
A YORKSHIREMAN’S SPORTS CAR
QUICK, LIST CARS named for planets in our Solar System. If you like, include the Uranus even though it’s a fictional marque from the Grand Theft Auto video game. Next, … Continue reading
EULER’S ELEGANCE
IN A SEARCH for elegance in mathematics, look no further than Euler’s Formula, e i π = -1. This equation takes three perhaps obscure mathematical constants, e, i and π, … Continue reading
RED & TRACK
WE USED TO joke that the real name of the magazine was Red & Track. Subscribers, bless their hearts, would enjoy a magazine whatever was on the cover. But a … Continue reading
SHAKESPEARE FIRST FOLIO
IT’S NOT LIKE they’ve just found the original typewriter ribbon from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. On the other hand, there were perhaps no more than 750 … Continue reading
THIRD PERSON SINGULAR
THE LINGUISTIC gender war in English has been raging over the third person pronoun, particularly in its singular personal form: he/him, masculine, and she/her, feminine. There are those, macho, feminist, … Continue reading
THE POTENCY OF COLOR
IT WAS the color scheme that attracted me to the Vulcan American Moth. Its photograph in Classic Airplanes of the Thirties: Aircraft of the Roaring Twenties (Flight, Its First Seventy-Five … Continue reading
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