THE EYES HAVE IT—0R D0 THℇY?
ARE THESE characters above alphabetical Os or numerical zeroes? Is that a backwards 3 or a stylized alphabetical E, or is it the Greek letter Epsilon or Euler’s constant? Here … Continue reading
HONDA S-600: TIDY, LIVELY, ENDEARING
IT WAS 1965 and an American serviceman returned from two years in Japan with Honda’s latest sports car, the S-600. What’s more, he offered his car to R&T for a … Continue reading
THE VERY LAST GREEN THING, AN OPERA FOR KIDS—AND FOR OUR TIMES
CARY JOHN FRANKLIN’S opera The Very Last Green Thing has a cast of kids. This is most appropriate: Operas typically concern the past, something that kids (and we) can only … Continue reading
ON BEING FOOTLESS AND INQUISITIVE
I GET SO MUCH more than book learning from the London Review of Books. Consider this opening line of a Katherine Rundell article: “A common swift, in its lifetime, flies … Continue reading
POKÉMON GO VERSUS THE CANADIAN MILITARY
DAUGHTER SUZ is an ardent player of Pokémon GO, the augmented-reality game wherein players chase digital animated creatures all over the world. And when I say “ardent,” I note with … Continue reading
TIDBITS GLEANED FROM AUTOMOTIVE NEWS
AUTOMOTIVE NEWS is the weekly source of its industry’s happenings, data, and trends. It has been around since 1925. At one time called Automotive Daily News, it was published on … Continue reading
IDZ! POLSKIE WILGA! IDZ!
IN POLISH, THE WORD wilga describes a golden oriole; also, the Wilga PZL-104 is a Polish aircraft of notable STOL (short-takeoff-and-landing) characteristics. Its first variant having flown in 1962, the … Continue reading
ETYMOLOOGY: DEUTSCHESPRACH AND OTHERS
THE GERMAN LANGUAGE is great at word-building. For instance, I recall the following storefront signage. Come to think of it, my source for this photo, translated into German, is another … Continue reading
ROBOTS: DO WE PREFER PALS OR MACHINES? PART 2
YESTERDAY IN SIMANAITISSAYS, we encountered variations of robot design: C3-PO’s plated mechanicals are nonetheless humanlike. R2-D2’s mechanical torso, arms, and legs give him some humanoid cred. HAL 9000’s impersonal red-eye … Continue reading
ROBOTS: DO WE PREFER PALS OR MACHINES? PART 1
SCI-FI AND REALITY have given us extremes of human/robotic interaction, everything from anthropomorphic constructs to idealized machines bearing no resemblance to humans. What do we prefer? A human-shaped C-3PO? A … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 