NANOPOROUS FABRICS MAY KEEP US COOL
THE SAME SCIENTIFIC principle that explains a blue sky might bring new fabrics that keep us cool. Researchers have recently engineered polyethylenes that are measurably better than cotton or “cool” … Continue reading
EARLY AVIATION MOVIES
I WAS BROWSING in Aeroplane (or Flying machine) Scrap Book Number 3 1911-1941 and read an ad for an early aviation flick, The Air Mail, 1925. This got me wondering … Continue reading
THE ORIGIN OF WINE
SAVEUR IS MY FAVORITE culinary magazine. It’s more than a collection of recipes, some straightforward and others exotically complex. Saveur is also a travel magazine, exploring how people around the … Continue reading
PREPARE FOR EUROPE ’06
WHY CONSULT A TRAVEL BOOK that’s already 10 years old? No, make that 110. I’ve just been armchair traveling with a woman named H.A. Guerber and I’m having a ball. … Continue reading
RIFFS FROM BECK AND LUTZ
JEFF BECK, rock guitarist of Yardbirds fame, and Bob Lutz, auto executive extraordinaire, have more in common than I might have thought. Both are elder statesmen: Beck, 72; Lutz, 84. … Continue reading
A STOCK CAR, A RENAMED GERMAN AND A FAVORITE BOLIDE
TO CONTINUE MY perusing R&Ts of six decades ago, I share a few tidbits from February 1956. Among them are a test of a Ford NASCAR, a Letter to the … Continue reading
THINKING ABOUT AVERAGE
LAKE WOBEGON FOLKS are all above average, yet how many of them know the difference between median and mean? This time, I’m not referring to that strip of land between … Continue reading
SEDIMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m recycling this wonderfully non-Canonical title from a David Bressan blog in Scientific American. It’s too good to resist for my reflections on Sherlock Holmes and his geologic … Continue reading
MUSINGS ON THINGS JAPANESE AND WESTERN
I’M READING a book that enhances my Nipponophile tendencies. This word comes from the Japanese name for their country, Nihon, and the Greek φιλέω, phileo, to love. Janice Nimura’s book, … Continue reading
GEOLOGICALLY SPEAKING, WHAT TIME IS IT?
LET’S TALK ABOUT geology’s time clock. Stratigraphy concerns what can be learned from the order and relative position of rock layers. The word is a Latin/Greek hybrid: stratum Latin for … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 