THE HERRING IS RED! PART 2
THAT THIS ETYMOLOGICAL RESEARCH emanates from a Sam Spade adventure that’s 78 years old suggests my questionable priorities of time allotment. In any case, here in Part 2 we brings … Continue reading
EINSTEIN’S ANNUS MIRACULOSUS PART 2
RAY MONK’S “EINSTEIN’S MIRACLE YEAR” encouraged our celebrating relativity theory and its fascinating implications in reviewing three recent books: Free Creations of the Human Mind: The Worlds of Albert Einstein; The … Continue reading
EINSTEIN’S ANNUS MIRACULOSUS PART 1
“NEW THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE, NEWTONIAN IDEAS OVERTHROWN” ANNOUNCED THE TIMES of London, November 7, 1919. Yet it could have been even more astonishing: “GRAVITY BENDS LIGHT!” This thought came … Continue reading
PUNCTUATION, LOUD AND CLEAR
IN A REVIEW OF FLORENCE HAZRAT’S On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World, Judith Shulevitz writes “Punctuation: A Generational Divide,” The Atlantic, August 2026. Indeed, … Continue reading
ON THE VERNE BRAND PART 2
PART 1 STARTED WITH RAYMOND N. MACKENZIE’S LRB review of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Moon, a new translation of both his De la Terre à la Lune and its … Continue reading
ON THE VERNE BRAND PART 1
RAYMOND N. MACKINZIE OBSERVES, “By the last decades of the 19th century, Jules Verne was less a writer than a brand—one carefully cultivated by his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel—promising a specific … Continue reading
FLICK THE STORY OF FEMALE PLEASURE
I LEARNED ABOUT KATE LISTER’S NEW BOOK FLICK THE STORY OF FEMALE PLEASURE in “Sexual Her-Story,” by Sarah Jones, History Extra Magazine, Vol. 27 No. 6, June 2026. Its subtitle … Continue reading
GETTING HEP—NUMERICALLY
WHAT WITH POPE LEO XIV ACKNOWLEDGING 6-7 and all of us knowing 86-47, this got me interested in getting hep numerically. I cite Smoky Hill Museum for its “1920s Slang” … Continue reading
VIEWS FROM MCGUFFEY ECLECTIC READERS, SOME EVEN PROGRESSIVE PART 1
THE BROTHERS WILLIAM HOLMES AND ALEXANDER HAMILTON MCGUFFEY edited a series of Readers for grades 1-6. As noted by Wikipedia, these Eclectic Readers “were widely used as textbooks in American … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 
VIEWS FROM MCGUFFEY ECLECTIC READERS, SOME EVEN PROGRESSIVE PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE STARTED STUDY OF MCGUFFEY’S ECLECTIC READERS, USING its annotated version edited by Stanley W. Lindberg. Today in Part 2 we continue with a lesson that’s a fundamental one … Continue reading →