ICELAND—LAND OF OPERA, SCULPTURE, AND STREET FOOD AT 1 A.M.
ARMCHAIR TRAVEL IS a blessing these days. And, for me, old travel books provide the vehicle. Cook’s Traveller’s Handbook to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, 1936, is a fine example … Continue reading
THE BALSAMO/CAGLIOSTRO SAGA PART 3
WERE THE COUNT and Countess Cagliostros merely 18th-century proto-Eurotrash? Or is this too strong an assessment? Here in Part 3, we conclude with more tidbits gleaned from faust.com. The Affair … Continue reading
THE BALSAMO/CAGLIOSTRO SAGA PART 2
YESTERDAY, HERE AT SimanaitisSays, 18th-century conman Giuseppe Balsamo and his wife Serafina were in Cadiz, Spain. He had just “acquired” an expensive walking stick set with diamonds in its handle … Continue reading
THE BALSAMO/CAGLIOSTRO SAGA PART 1
MODERN CONMEN ARE short-fingered vulgarians compared to Giuseppe/Joseph Balsamo aka the Count Alessandro di Cagliostro. This 18th-century scam artist was in no particular order, a mystic, magician, gigolo, pimp, Coptic … Continue reading
SEEKING ANONYMITY IN A CROWD PART 2
JOHN SEABROOK’s MOST informative “Dressing for the Surveillance Age” in yesterday’s SimanaitisSays got us into the latest of deep-learning facial recognition. Today in Part 2, we learn about our cars’ … Continue reading
SEEKING ANONYMITY IN A CROWD PART 1
IT’S LIKE LIVING IN a small town, where everyone knows everything about everyone else. Or, at least, they think they do. Modern surveillance technology recognizes the face in the crowd. … Continue reading
LATTER-DAY RAZOR EDGES
WHEN THE MUSEUM of Modern Art in New York City celebrated the automobile in 1951, its catalog commended the razor-edge styling of one of MOMA’s eight cars by observing “the … Continue reading
ETIMOLOGIA PER I NOSTRI TEMPI
A REPORT FROM coronavirus-stricken Northern Italy contains a plea to eschew the time-honored Italian tradition of furbizia, the artful evasion of government directives of everything from income tax to traffic … Continue reading
MR. ZERO AND AI
WHAT WITH THE societal discontinuities of artificial intelligence, AI, for short, a drama of almost a century ago comes to mind. Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine was first staged in … Continue reading
I’VE GOT A SONG IN MY HEAD—BUT WHERE?
DIFFERENT REGIONS OF the human brain are occupied with different processes. Its right hemisphere controls the left side of the body, and is the more artistic and creative hemisphere; the … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 