THE O.S.S. AND RUBE GOLDBERG
NOT TO DISPARAGE THE HEROIC WORK of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, but several of its false starts make for entertaining reading. My source of this … Continue reading
IT USTA BE SANTA CLARA VALLEY PART 2
YESTERDAY, COMPUTER VACUUM TUBES FAILED every couple days and the valley had yet to be named Silicon. Today in Part 2, we continued gleaning insights from John Lanchester’s “Putting the … Continue reading
IT USTA BE SANTA CLARA VALLEY PART 1
John Lanchester’s “Putting the Silicon in Silicon Valley,” London Review of Books, March 16, 2023, offers information galore about our silicon chip age. At almost 6000 words, the article is … Continue reading
RECITERS OF LONDON—HENRY MAYHEW, CHARLES LAUGHTON, AND VIVIAN LEIGH
IN HIS FASCINATING COMPENDIUM of London during the mid-1800s, Henry Mayhew described everything from costermongers’ comestibles to mudlarkers’ low-tide Thames treasures. Recalling classic Charles Laughton flicks got me researching another … Continue reading
2024 CORVETTE E-RAY HYBRID
WHEN I WROTE “WHY NOT HYBRIDS?” I suspect Corvette engineers were thinking along decidedly different lines. Celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Vette, they’ve revealed the 2024 hybrid E-Ray. Here … Continue reading
TOOT THAT YURUPARÍ, MAN!
NICOLAS SLONIMSKY SURE FOUND JOY in musicology. He has appeared several times here at SimanaitisSays. And I remember Nick fondly from the old days of Southern California classical radio KFAC, … Continue reading
“HOW SAFE IS SAFE ENOUGH FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES?”
THIS MOST COGENT QUESTION is addressed by a Carnegie Mellon associate professor who has written a book on this crucial topic. Professor Philip Koopman has also written an article in … Continue reading
1957 JAGUAR XK-SS
WHAT FUN IT IS TO DRIVE an out-and-out competition car on the street! I’ve had that pleasure a few times, most memorably a week or so with the Fiat Abarth … Continue reading
PRODUCTIVITY—THE DYNAMO, THE COMPUTER, AND A.I.
PAUL KRUGMAN’S “A.I. MAY CHANGE EVERYTHING, But Probably Not Too Quickly,” The New York Times, March 31, 2023, is a fascinating parable on technology and its effects on productivity. It … Continue reading
LORE FROM LRB LETTERS
THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS devotes a full page each issue to “Letters,” and a goodly number of these are as entertaining and informative as LRB articles. Here are tidbits … Continue reading
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