WHA’CHA’ CALL IT? AND WHERE Y’AT?
WE ARE AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING NATION, SORTA. But our regional dialects and slang are entertaining too. I’ve written about this from time to time. And recently I came upon The American … Continue reading
A NEW RESEARCH MENTOR
THERE ARE THOSE WHO ADVISE THAT I’m beyond the age of adopting a mentor, but Edward Brooke-Hitching is certainly in the running. This, I note, arose from Susannah Clapp’s “Not … Continue reading
RESISTING A.I. SLOP—AAAS SCIENCE’S VIEW
H. HOLDEN THORP DESCRIBES “Resisting A.I. Slop,” AAAS Science, January 1, 2026. Given that Thorp is Editor-in-Chief of all Science journals, he’s an excellent source of thoughtful information on this … Continue reading
IN NEED OF A DIVINE COMEDY PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1 WE BEGAN sharing Eric Bulson’s review of Mary Jo Bang’s new translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia. In today’s Part 2, Bulson explores Italian (and its Tuscan … Continue reading
IN NEED OF A DIVINE COMEDY PART 1
READERS BACK TO 2017 MAY RECALL “Dante’s Inferno, a Destination Guide;” this, concerning the first of three parts of Divina Commedia (the other two, Purgatorio and Paradiso). Durante degli Alighieri, … Continue reading
A FULL CENTURY OF AUTOMOTIVE NEWS
THE YEAR 1925 WAS AN INTERESTING ONE in the history of the automobile: Ford produced 1,911,706 Model Ts; up from 1922’s 1,301,067 and to dwindle to 1.5 million (its last … Continue reading
MY FAVS OF 2025
IN THE 12.3-YEARS OF SIMANAITISSAYS, 2025 was particularly busy with almost daily entries. This was encouraged by the website occasionally being my personal protest against Trump 2.0. In spite of … Continue reading
CELEBRATING BEN FRANKLIN, SCIENTIST
LET US COUNTER THESE DAYS OF LAMENTABLY UNDERACHIEVING POLITICIANS by celebrating Benjamin Franklin, a statesman—and scientist—of the highest order. Ferdinand Mount’s “His Very Variousness,” London Review of Books, December 4, … Continue reading
A NEW INAMORATA PART 2
YESTERDAY WE BEGAN MY APPRECIATION of Margaret Atwood, her memoir Book of Lives, and its two articles in The New York Times “100 Notable Books of 2025.” Today in Part … Continue reading
A NEW INAMORATA PART 1
AT MY AGE? NO MATTER, BECAUSE SHE’S 85. And my infatuation is an intellectual one, based upon my reading about Margaret Atwood in several articles in “100 Notable Books of … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 