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
BEAR WITH ME, DEAR, AS I SPEAK CREATIVELY
I MAY have had more pressing matters on my mind, but I was also musing on the difficulties of the English language, its pronunciation and spelling. It’s quite enough for … Continue reading
OPERA PUPPETRY
I’VE BEEN enjoying puppets in operas. Not puppet operas per se, where all the characters are controlled by puppeteers, but rather operatic productions making use of puppets interacting with real … Continue reading
NOËL COWARD’S JAMAICA
A COMPELLING image of Noël Coward is one of elegance at a theater in London’s West End or maybe in glittering Las Vegas. Yet one of the most urbane of … Continue reading
THE ULTIMATE URBAN TRANSPORT
GIVEN THAT R&T had been accused of being Anglophilic and traditional, what more appropriate test than that of an 18th-century sedan chair? And, as was our custom, we performed this … Continue reading
ORSON WELLES FOR PRESIDENT!
NOT THAT there aren’t elements of unreality about this year’s presidential campaigns, but here I present Fantasy Politics, an entertaining blend of fact and fiction. Indeed, mostly fact. Orson Welles … Continue reading
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