THE RICHNESS OF PRESTON STURGES PART 2
YESTERDAY, FILM DIRECTOR PRESTON STURGES lolled with the likes of folks named Hutton, Post, and Woolworth. It apparently rubbed off, and his movies blended this rich environment with a screwball … Continue reading
THE RICHNESS OF PRESTON STURGES PART 1
CONNECT THE DOTS: THIRTIES FILM DIRECTOR Preston Sturges and Mar-a-Loco, er… Lago. Indeed, as cited by David Trotter’s “An Elite Worth Joining,” London Review of Books, April 13, 2023, the … Continue reading
BROCCOLI TIDBITS—INCLUDING A MCDONALD SNAFU, A MISRECALLED CARTOON, AND A RECIPE COMPLETE WITH FULL DISCLOSURES
THESE PARTICULAR TIDBITS SURELY DON’T suffer from lack of variety. They arose from two seemingly unrelated events: reading about a rare McDonald failure and wondering how to finish off the … Continue reading
HARVESTING ELECTRICITY FROM THE AIR—BEN FRANKLIN, NICOLA TESLA, THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST PART 2
YESTERDAY IN “HARVESTING ETC. ETC, PART 1”, Franklin fooled with a kite, Telsa fooled with giant arcs. Both preceded recent research about deriving renewable electric power from the air itself. … Continue reading
HARVESTING ELECTRICITY FROM THE AIR—BEN FRANKLIN, NICOLA TESLA, THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST PART 1
RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY of Massachusetts, Amherst, and, independently, at the European Commission’s CATCHER project have been transforming atmospheric humidity into renewable power. This is in line with Benjamin Franklin’s … Continue reading
SCIENTIFIC METAPHORS
ADVANCEMENTS IN SCIENCE PROFIT from explanatory metaphors. For instance, hydrogen’s promiscuity explains why its universal abundance doesn’t promote its being the slam-dunk of energy production. There’s lots of hydrogen, but … Continue reading
PEGASO TIDBITS PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE LEARNED FROM R&T, November 1954, that Wilfredo Ricart’s Pegaso cars seemed well-nigh unbreakable. Today several other sources contribute to this Spanish exotic’s history. More Pegaso Lore. Wikipedia gives … Continue reading
PEGASO TIDBITS PART 1
READING OLD R&T MAGAZINES is like experiencing a time machine, in this case, back to November 1954. Robert C. Goldich’s “The Flying Horses of Barcelona” was about the Pegaso, Spain’s … Continue reading
APPRECIATING MATERIALS
LEARNING THAT NOTRE DAME RESTORATION was featuring medieval craftsmanship prompted pal and regular reader Bob Storck to share a similar tale from a classic barn raising: “I learned,” he wrote, … Continue reading
A.I. GIGO
IT’S A TIME-HONORED TRADITION of computer programming: Garbage In/Garbage Out. And, all its hallucinations included, modern Artificial Intelligence is nothing more than high-falutin computer programming. Here are tidbits on recent … Continue reading
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