ANNOUNCED: THE 2021 IG NOBELS
THE SCIENCE HUMOR magazine Annals of Improbable Research satirizes serious research, but also suggests that oddities of research often possess scientific significance. This year’s Ig Nobels display this, though still … Continue reading
TREVITHICK’S MERRY ADVENTURES (MULLED DRINKS AND STUFFED GOOSE INCLUDED)
ENGLISH INVENTOR RICHARD TREVITHICK had a novel idea: Why not use steam power to transport people? Here are tidbits on his 1801 steam carriage, a 21st-century recreation of its 1802 … Continue reading
ON SPAGHETTI AND MURAKAMI
HARUKI MURAKAMI’S BOOKS have entertained and occasionally baffled me. They’re typically first-person narratives, with side trips to history, psychology, and fantasy. This Japanese writer came to mind while reading The … Continue reading
LIKE GRANDMA USTA MAKE
WE ALL HAVE immigrant ancestors. In the long term of the Bering Strait, Native Americans have them too. In this celebration of immigrant ancestors, I offer tidbits on one of … Continue reading
LE CAR POPPED STEROIDS
BACK IN 1972, Renault introduced the 5, a competitor to the ubiquitous Volkswagen Beetle, the Austin Mini, and other small four-passenger cars of the era. The Renault 5 did particularly … Continue reading
HEY, FELLA, WANNA SCORE A HOT FOSSIL?
SMUGGLING OLD BONES seems like a strange con. But fossils have value, and everyone from quarry workers to paleontologists have been malefactors. Countering them have been the F.B.I. and similar … Continue reading
AFFAIRES DE COOKBOOKS
NORA EPHRON IS one of a few writers who make me laugh out loud. The New Yorker recently republished a perfect example of this in her “Serial Monogamy,” originally published … Continue reading
TIDBITS OF COAL
SERENDIPIDLY, COAL RECENTLY unearthed in two different contexts, the London Review of Books and SiriusXM “Radio Classics.” Here are tidbits about both, together with my usual Internet mining. Coal and … Continue reading
TWENTY-SIX MILES ACROSS THE SEA, A PBY HAS TRANSPORTED ME
ACTUALLY IT WAS a bit farther, around 65 miles from the harbors of St. Thomas to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The PBY Catalina was flown by Antilles Airboat, with even … Continue reading
FORMULA ONE FUEL TIDBITS PART 2
YESTERDAY, IT WAS SUGGESTED that Sebastian Vettel’s disqualification from last month’s Hungarian GP was not unrelated to Formula One rocket fuels of the late 1980s until 1991. Today in Part … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 