MYSTERIOUS MALAY MAMMAL SHOWS ITS SPOTS
THE LEOPARD, Panthera pardus, is found from Russia’s frozen north to southern Africa’s scorching Kalahari Desert. It is the world’s most widely distributed large cat as well as a keystone … Continue reading
EARLY SEA-GOING AVIATION
SAMUEL PIERPONT Langley demonstrated that his 1896 Aërodrome No. 5, an unpiloted model aircraft, could be spring-catapulted aloft from a boat. Two later attempts with a larger version tossed both … Continue reading
A GRAPHIC NOVEL FROM 1930
THE MODERN term “graphic novel,” especially Japanese manga, conjures up vibrant images of mayhem, graphic in both the pictorial sense and also in explicitness. I offer here a historical counterexample, … Continue reading
ON THE VIRTUES OF (HIGHLY SELECTIVE) CONNECTIVITY
WE LIVE in a highly connected world. (Otherwise, of course, SimanaitisSays wouldn’t exist.) But a couple of happenings suggest we have reached a tipping point. The two I have in … Continue reading
WHA’ CHA’ M’ CALL IT
LIKE DOOHICKEY and gizmo, wha’ cha’ m’ call it (also rendered whatchamacallit) is a placeholder, a word referring to things the names of which are irrelevant, unknown or temporarily forgotten. … Continue reading
ON EARLY SLEUTHING
MANY CONSIDER Sherlock Holmes the world’s first detective. With more than a little hubris, a while back I proposed otherwise in noting that Kumedera Danjō, the hero in the Kabuki … Continue reading
MAZDA LAUNDRY GOES “HMMMMMM”
BACK IN the 1970s, Mazda made the excellent point that conventional engines went “boing boing boing,” whereas its rotary powerplant went “hmmmmmm.” Today, high-efficiency laundry facilities may go “hmmmmmm” as … Continue reading
ERCOLE BORATTO: RACE DRIVER, MUSSOLINI’S CHAUFFEUR—AND HIS LEPORELLO
IN MOZART’S Don Giovanni, Leporello does many things for his boss, one of them maintaining a catalog of the lecherous Giovanni’s conquests. (One line of the aria: Ma in Espana, … Continue reading
MICHAEL MAY’S MARVELOUS IDEA
YOU MIGHT think that somewhere in Zuffenhausen, Porsche’s legendary home outside Stuttgart, Germany, there’d be a statue honoring Michael May. Alas, to the best of my research, there is not. … Continue reading
IMPRESSIONISM, SACRÉ BLEU AND CADMIUM-SULFIDE YELLOW
THIS IS triply a celebration of an era, a book review and a scientific tidbit. The era is the Belle Epoque, 1871 to the outbreak of World War I, when … Continue reading
