RIP’S DREAM
RIP VAN WINKLE slept—and dreamt—from January 20, 2020, to January 20, 2021. When he awoke from this extended nap, he asked his daughter, “So, what’s new?” “Dad,” she said, “you … Continue reading
FINNED SEISMOLOGISTS AID IN OCEANIC RESEARCH
THE FIN WHALE, Balaenotera physalus, grows to about 80 ft. in length, weighs up to 80 tons, lives more than 80 years, and chats with others of its species in … Continue reading
CELEBRATING MAGAZINES
STEVEN LOMAZOW, M.D., collects magazine, some 83,000 of them. And New York City’s Grolier Club has assembled an exhibition selected from his collection. Jennifer Schuessler writes “Are Magazines Dead? Not … Continue reading
BLAISE PASCAL—COUNTING ON THINGS
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MATHEMATICIAN Blaise Pascal was also a physicist, philosopher, theologian, and inventor, perhaps best known for co-founding the mathematical theory of probability and devising Pascal’s Triangle coefficients of the binomial … Continue reading
A BEAUTIFUL LOVE LETTER TO THE SIMPLE, SOULFUL FOODS OF JAPAN
MY TITLE HERE is taken from comments offered by American chef, restauranteur, and activist Alice Waters in describing Sonoko Sakai’s book Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors. Sakai says, … Continue reading
BARD STATS
WHEN WIFE DOTTIE was a kid, she and her friend Gracie Watts would perform plays for their parents. When she asked her dad which part he liked best, he’d invariably … Continue reading