UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENTIAL
EVERY FEW years, I feel compelled to reeducate myself on the workings of an automotive differential. There’s nothing particularly life-critical about this; it’s akin to doing crosswords left-handed when one … Continue reading
TV HISTORY AND CULTURE
MY PRINCIPAL enthusiasms for television are British (its mysteries and period dramas) and historical (TV’s place in an evolving culture). I unearthed a book on this latter topic. I’ll save … Continue reading
MACGYVER—YOU GO, GRRL!
HOLLYWOOD AND engineering organizations have teamed up with a neat project: Five aspiring screenwriters are developing TV pilots of series starring female heroes of science. The Next MacGyver competition is … Continue reading
MOZART SELLS! BUT SO DOES WILLY NELSON
AUSTRALIAN RESEARCHERS have studied the music congruity effects on consumer behavior; loosely, how background music affects sales of one thing or another. Not surprisingly, it depends on what’s being sold … Continue reading
TAKE MY MATH TEXT, PLEASE
FROM TIME to time, people tell me that mathematicians are a humorless lot. This, despite my having a tee-shirt (I’m wearing it at the moment) that says “Another day with … Continue reading
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
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
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
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
ENGINEERING THE SEAHORSE
THERE’S A joke about God’s engineering background: He’s an Electrical Engineer because of the brain’s neurological wonders, a Mechanical Engineer because of the skeleton’s elegant efficiency, a Chem Eng because … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 