A NEW RESEARCH MENTOR
THERE ARE THOSE WHO ADVISE THAT I’m beyond the age of adopting a mentor, but Edward Brooke-Hitching is certainly in the running. This, I note, arose from Susannah Clapp’s “Not … Continue reading
WHY DO I THINK OF A PETULANT PUERILE MOBSTER?
THANKS TO SiriusXM “Radio Classics” and Turner Movie Classics, I am not without knowledge about gangster portrayals of yore. Perhaps you know the type: amoral to an extreme, full of … Continue reading
RESISTING A.I. SLOP—AAAS SCIENCE’S VIEW
H. HOLDEN THORP DESCRIBES “Resisting A.I. Slop,” AAAS Science, January 1, 2026. Given that Thorp is Editor-in-Chief of all Science journals, he’s an excellent source of thoughtful information on this … Continue reading
THANK YOU, ANDY BOROWITZ
ANDY’S WELL-CRAFTED SATIRE APPEARS from time to time here. A recent contribution from Andy, bless ’em, deserves reproduction word for word. With Due Acknowledgement: “When in the course of human … Continue reading
IN NEED OF A DIVINE COMEDY PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1 WE BEGAN sharing Eric Bulson’s review of Mary Jo Bang’s new translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia. In today’s Part 2, Bulson explores Italian (and its Tuscan … Continue reading
IN NEED OF A DIVINE COMEDY PART 1
READERS BACK TO 2017 MAY RECALL “Dante’s Inferno, a Destination Guide;” this, concerning the first of three parts of Divina Commedia (the other two, Purgatorio and Paradiso). Durante degli Alighieri, … Continue reading
POLITICAL CARTOONS—MY FAVS OF 2025
THERE’S AN ADMIRABLE HERITAGE of political cartooning in our country, stretching back at least 150 years to the Father of the American Cartoon, Thomas Nast (1840–1902). “Is this a republican … Continue reading
A FULL CENTURY OF AUTOMOTIVE NEWS
THE YEAR 1925 WAS AN INTERESTING ONE in the history of the automobile: Ford produced 1,911,706 Model Ts; up from 1922’s 1,301,067 and to dwindle to 1.5 million (its last … Continue reading
A QUITE PROPER MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE—1923 PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE EMBARKED ON A CRUISE around the Mediterranean Sea with Rolland Jenkins’ 1923 guidebook. Today, we continue in Part 2, first with the “sparkling city of Algiers.” Algiers. “The … Continue reading
A QUITE PROPER MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE—1923 PART 1
THEY CERTAINLY KNEW HOW TO TRAVEL BACK THEN. And to write about it as well: Rolland Jenkins noted cogently, “In looking over the material available in the form of what … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 