BUILT LIKE A BRICK
THESE DAYS, E-tailing downplays the term “brick and mortar.” However, this building material duo has interesting aspects, as described in Arianne Shahvisi’s “Diary” piece “Life in a Tinderbox,” in London … Continue reading
SOME KIDS NEVER GROW UP
THIS KID, BORN in 1906, ran off to join the Barnum & Bailey Circus. After his circus career waned in the early 1930s, he disappeared in 1936. Relatives discovered the … Continue reading
CELEBRATING THE GLOBE THEATRE
THEATER IS REOPENING in the U.S. and, in time, in other parts of the world as well. Let’s celebrate this by recalling a classic venue: London’s Globe. Here are tidbits … Continue reading
BI SHENG’S MOVABLE TYPE
BI SHENG WAS unknown to me until I read that he, not Gutenberg, first devised movable type. This prompted me to dig out the research books, fire up the Internet. … Continue reading
A FLYING CAR? A ROADABLE PLANE?
WE HAVE UPSIZED drones proposed today as just-around-the-corner flying cars. But it’s interesting that we’ve already been there, done that. Here are tidbits about the 1921 Tampier Avion-Motorcar, not exactly … Continue reading
JUST DON’T CALL HIM “OPPA”
“A VICIOUS CANCER,” said Kim Jong-un, “is corrupting attire, hairstyles, speeches, behaviors.” State media warned that, if unchecked, North Korea would “crumble like a damp wall.” Image by Bloomberg from … Continue reading
MEDIEVAL MEN GOT THE POINT—AND BUNIONS TOO
JUST AS MANY women today pay a painful price for wearing squeeze-toe stiletto heels, stylish medieval European men suffered from what BBC News, June 11, 2021, called the “Cambridge bunion … Continue reading
READING—A LONG VIEW
TODAY’S TIDBITS TAKE a long view on reading and its celebration of our living in one of two pivotal periods: the transition of script to print and from print to … Continue reading
$1.2 MILLION, EVENTUALLY, FOR LOSING A DEBATE WITH EINSTEIN
THIS IS A WIN-WIN story in the annals of theoretical physics. In 1905, Albert Einstein published the equation E = mc2, thus positing that energy and mass are essentially two … Continue reading
I WISH I’D SAID THAT. AND I SHALL.
I CONTINUE TO encounter comments I wish I had said. And, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde’s quote, I offer here several good ones originally appearing in the London Review of Books. Fries … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 