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: May, 2021

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS TIDBITS

WHAT WITH ONE thing and another, I’ve let almost two months of my Automotive News with little more than scanning the front pages of this industry weekly. EVs coming; check. … Continue reading

May 31, 2021 · 2 Comments

JOAN OF ARC, 15TH-CENTURY GRRL PART 2

JOAN OF ARC is credited in yesterday’s Part 1 here at SimanaitisSays with listening to heavenly voices and uniting France against the English. For this, she was burned at the … Continue reading

May 30, 2021 · 3 Comments

JOAN OF ARC, 15TH-CENTURY GRRL   PART 1

WHY MY INTEREST in Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orléans, the heroine of all France? Actually there are multiple reasons: one, a recent retrospective in London Review of Books, others, … Continue reading

May 29, 2021 · Leave a comment

FRANCO CORTESE’S BRIT RIDE

ITALIAN RACE DRIVER Franco Cortese competed in 156 races between 1927 and his 1958 retirement. These included one Formula One Grand Prix, three Formula Two Grands Prix, and 14 Mille … Continue reading

May 28, 2021 · Leave a comment

REPUBLICAN THEATER OF THE ABSURD   PART 2

YESTERDAY IN “Republican Theater of the Absurd, Act I,” we commented on this theater genre’s dramatic circularity, starting with initial logic, then deteriorating into irrationality, and culminating where it all … Continue reading

May 27, 2021 · 1 Comment

REPUBLICAN THEATER OF THE ABSURD   PART 1

MERRIAM-WEBSTER SAYS “Theater of the Absurd is theater that seeks to represent the absurdity of human existence in a meaningless universe by bizarre or fantastic means.” Wikipedia adds, “The structure … Continue reading

May 26, 2021 · Leave a comment

RETHINKING NEANDERTHALS    PART 2

JOHN LANCASTER’S ARTICLE, “Twenty Types of Humans,” London Review of Books, December 17, 2020, got me thinking about the status of Homo neanderthalensis. In particular, perhaps they weren’t knuckle-dragging stocky … Continue reading

May 25, 2021 · 1 Comment

RETHINKING NEANDERTHALS    PART 1

“OF ALL OUR human relatives,” John Lancaster wrote in the London Review of Books, December 17, 2020, “the closest in both time and genetics, the most compelling, and the best … Continue reading

May 24, 2021 · 1 Comment

MAKING A POINT, ARTWISE

POINTILLISM, AS DEFINED  by Merriam-Webster, is “the theory or practice in art of applying small strokes or dots of color to a surface so that from a distance they blend … Continue reading

May 23, 2021 · Leave a comment

“CAN YOU READ ME A FLOPPY, GRANDPA?”   PART 2

YESTERDAY IN PART 1, we found that scads of 1s and 0s weren’t amenable to human memory. Stacks of punched cards had critical ordering. And cassette loading of programs was … Continue reading

May 22, 2021 · 2 Comments