ON DEADLY ACCESSIBLE TECHNOLOGY
MAYBE CONTRITION prompted Alfred Nobel to devise the Peace Prize. He made a fortune from his 1867 patent for dynamite. Nobel’s Blasting Powder was marketed as a safer alternative to … Continue reading
HOW COME WHALES ARE SO BIG?
“BLUE WHALE HEARTS May Beat Only Twice a Minute During a Dive,” wrote Cara Giaimo in The New York Times, November 27, 2019. Equally interesting was this article’s reference to … Continue reading
MANGA TIDBITS PART 2
YESTERDAY WE began a celebration of manga, the Japanese genre of pictorial storytelling. Today in Part 2, we’ll see how manga pacing and text presentation set it apart from the … Continue reading
MANGA TIDBITS PART 1
THE JAPANESE WORD マンガ, manga means “pictures running riot,” a good description of this genre of pictorial storytelling. Or as comics authority Paul Gravett terms it, “more than telling a … Continue reading
AN ALL-WHEEL-DRIVE BUGATTI!
A BUGATTI WITH all-wheel drive? Am I talking about the latter-day Veyron? No. Do I mean the EB110 that I drove back in 1994? No. I mean a real Bugatti … Continue reading
WOMEN AT THE WHEEL
I RECENTLY READ a debunking of the “just a woman driver” myth. It was in “What a Woman Can Do With an Auto” by Robert Sloss who made “the surprising … Continue reading
CHAUCER TIDBITS
A NEW 624-PAGE biography of Geoffrey Chaucer aroused my interest. Not quite enough, I admit, to read all 624 pages yet, but sufficient to enjoy reading a review of this … Continue reading
1911 VALKYRIE MONOPLANE PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE HAD Horatio Barber’s Valkyrie demonstrating its short take-off capability by charging directly at admiring crowds. Today in Part 2, the Valkyrie continues to entertain, becomes the world’s first … Continue reading
1911 VALKYRIE MONOPLANE PART 1
WELL, HERE’S a pleasant surprise: the combination of an old aeroplane and Wagner’s Ring Cycle. What’s more surprising is finding a detailed article on that aeroplane from 1910. The tale … Continue reading
RACKETEERING ETYMOLOGIES
THE NEWS CONCERNING Trump, Giuliani, omertà, getting thrown under the bus, and other mob-speak got me wondering how the nice French sports racquet evolved into something as sordid as racketeering. … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 