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
AULD LANG SYNE
LET’S LOOK FORWARD to a Happy New Year tomorrow. But here on New Year’s Eve, it’s fun to be reflective with the Best of 2024, sorta. I’ve selected seven postings that I’m glad I researched and composed. In no particular order, and for no particularly unified reason:
Trippin’: U.S. Routes. Smithsonian Magazine reminded me of the open road and the good fun I’ve had thereon. The most elaborate: Fairbanks to Vancouver in a Toyota fuel-cell car. The company included a film crew to document the trip.
The shortest trip: Racing against the clock 5.2 miles up Vermont’s Mt. Equinox in a vintage Formula 3 car, thanks to fellow VSCCA pal David Cooper.
Food: Salisbury Steak. Research is an entertaining aspect of doing the website: It turned out that Salisbury Steak has nothing to do with the Earl of Salisbury, even though I had looked up his family history prior to fixing this culinary treat.
The fish shoulda been a giveway.
Indeed, the recipe traces to early food faddist Dr. James H. Salisbury. Its preparation is one I had the patience to document photographically, from browning the patties after a 15-minute freeze, through preparing the mushroom/onion/flour/stock/milk gravy, to the completed dish.
Yum.
Politics: A Right to Ignorance? Alas, the 2024 presidential election called for a modification of my SimSez Award.
I found Bryce Hoffman’s Forbes article “Factsand Opinions: Half of Americans Don’t Know the difference” explains a lot. And I continue to recall “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
Trump displaying an “alternative fact.”
A Tall Woman of Talent. So what’s this thing I have about tall women? At 5’ 7” Greta Garbo was tall for her era. Just as Cobina Wright Jr, 5’ 9,” was tall for hers.
Cobina and Robert Stack.
There’s a family tale about Robert Stack: Early in her career in video production, Daughter Beth worked on “Unsolved Mysteries” and marveled that Robert Stack never blinked. Even, apparently, when meeting Cobina.
An Editor, Y’Know: A Parlour Game: I enjoy languages, ours and foreign. This parlour game is good fun: Take a foreign phrase, change one letter, and create an entirely different meaning. Several of my favorites:
Harlez-Vous Français? Can you operate a French motorcycle?
Ex Post Fucto. Lost in the mail.
Monage à Trois. I am three years old.
Cogito Eggo Sum. I think, therefore I am a waffle.
Two offerings from a reader: Hasty banana! Gotta peel! [a double] and a very Existential Raisin d’être. Otherwise, why eat bran flakes?
Old-Time Radio: Comedics. My love of old-time radio, as enjoyed on SiriusXM “Radio Classics,” prompts me to recall favorite lines.
Memorable ones were part of The Burns and Allen Show’s “Gracie Allen for President,” a continuing theme during the 1940 Presidential campaign. A riff in her campaign song: “Even big politicians don’t know what to do/ Gracie doesn’t know either,/ But neither do you!”
Science/Technology: Abductive Reasoning. The Sci-Tech section of SimanaitisSays has had a lot about artificial intelligence’s Large Language Modeling: LLM scoops up zillions of bits off the Internet, then comes up with “facts” by predicting which word statistically follows another.
This sounds sketchy—and it is. I found Peter Coy’s “How Does A.I. Think? Here’s One Theory” particularly interesting in its description of “abductive” reasoning, of inferring the most likely explanation for a given observation. Sorta A.I. with creativity enhancing its pure stochastics.
Will A.I. ever evolve the concept of honesty? This is a question for the coming year—and we’ll be watching. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
Simanaitis Says 
1. AQUADEXTROUS (ak wa deks’ trus) adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes. 2. CARPERPETUATION (kar’ pur pet u a shun) n. The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string or a piece of lint at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance. 3. DISCONFECT (dis kon fekt’) v. To sterilize the piece of candy you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, assuming this will somehow ‘remove’ all the germs. 4. ELBONICS (el bon’ iks) n. The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater (airplane). 5. FRUST (frust) n. The small line of debris that refuses to be swept onto the dust pan and keep backing a person across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep it under the rug. 6. LACTOMANGULATION (lak’ to man guy lay’ shun) n. Manhandling the “open here” spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the ‘illegal’ side. 7. PEPPIER (pehp ee ay’) n. The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want ground pepper. 8. PHONESIA (fo nee’ zhuh) n. The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer. 9. PUPKUS (pup’kus) n. The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it. 10. TELECRASTINATION (tel e kras tin ay’ shun) n. The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you’re only six inches away.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by ev
Good fun, all.
Or as we used to mutter in High School Latino:
Cogito ergo sum…cogito
Yes, this matched my philosophical uncertainty exactly. Sorta a Latin “Y’know?”
I read and enjoyed, “Factsand Opinions: Half of Americans Don’t Know the difference” The tricky part is the word “objectively” in the sentence, “Facts are things that are objectively true right now.” Unless you are talking about physical reality, it is VERY difficult to agree on what is “objectively true right now.”
For example: “Is Trump a fascist?” “Is Musk dangerous?” “Is Putin as bad as Hitler?” These are all statements that you’ll hear some people answer “yes” and claim those statements are objectively true, some say they are not true, with most people probably somewhere in between. There is no way to objectively answer those questions, because each question is based on subjective definitions.
That is probably why I love math and engineering. 3 is always less than 5. Even if someone horrible says, “3 is less than 5,” it is still objectively true. I can objectively say Teslas’ FSD is less safe than other manufacturer’s technology (e.g. Mercedes), based on fatal accidents. I assume that more people will die if more Teslas are allowed on the road than Mercedes. I opine that Musk is dangerous for pushing Teslas to be allowed to use FSD more broadly before fixing the root problems.