A FINE-LOOKING STRUT, THAT
TWO COMMITTEES of the British Parliament have recently challenged a London firm’s dress code that had required women to wear heels from two to four inches high. Women at PwC, … Continue reading
A QUARTET OF ALTERNATIVE-FACT BOOKS
AMAZON RECENTLY noted a spike in sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s 1949 novel of a dystopian (as opposed to utopian) future. This brings to mind three other works about … Continue reading
THE PERIL TO EARTHBOUND ASTRONOMY
PITY POOR Earthbound astronomers. Their telescopes have to gaze through more than haze. Other perils include L.E.D. street lighting, the Internet and then there is the prospect of autonomous cars. … Continue reading
CROWD-COUNT CROWING
IN THESE DAYS OF alternative facts, I realize that anything scientific may be a hard sell to some. However, recent brouhahas over counting people make this an irresistible topic of … Continue reading
MAKING AMERICA GREAT—AND TASTY TOO!
FOR THE FIRST time in its 15th biennial existence, the Bocuse d’Or, the Olympics of international chefdom, has been won by an American team. Head Chef Mathew Peters and his … Continue reading
A MOCKING APOLOGY
RECENTLY I mentioned the Wizard of Oz in an item On Satire, Self-Inflicted and Otherwise. In retrospect, after more research, I owe an apology to the Wizard. True, the Wizard … Continue reading
EXPLORING RATIONALITY, PART 2
IN MY CONTINUING exploration of rationality, I offer the completed Decimal Exploration table of rational numbers 1/2 through 1/17 expressed in decimal form. Sorry about 1/17. I cannot speak for … Continue reading
EXPLORING RATIONALITY, PART 1
THE WORD “RATIONAL” is wondrous. One meaning is “having reason or understanding, balanced.” Another, in mathematics, describes the ratio of two numbers, a fraction. In my continuing fractional fun, here … Continue reading
WATSON’S WAR WOUND
THERE’S A LOT OF scholarship, some of it contradictory, regarding the war wound of Dr. John H. Watson, chronicler of the world’s greatest consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. Exactly where was … Continue reading
THE (MIS?)RULE OF THUMB
I RECENTLY posted a Facebook comment mentioning “rule of thumb” as contrasted with more scientific methods of measurement. Think crowd size, for instance. Before doing so, I felt compelled to … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 