A MURAT FAMILY BUSH
LEARNING A LITTLE recently about Murat the Younger and his Turkish Abductions of Icelanders, I felt compelled to search out Murat the Elder and others sharing this moniker. Pirate, admiral, … Continue reading
HELLO, JUPITER! SUE FINLEY IS ARRIVING
IN A FEW DAYS, Sue Finley may retire. This test engineer has worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 57 years, the woman with the longest career at NASA. Sue … Continue reading
WRY/PPW—WELCOME TO PAPA
THE SIX LETTERS WRY/PPW (and PPW/WRY) identify the world’s shortest commercial flights, Loganair’s hops in Scotland’s Orkney Islands. These flights are between Westray (in airport lingo, WRY) and its neighbor … Continue reading
RED BURGUNDY HEIRLOOM OKRA
ALTHOUGH I CANNOT find it, both Wife Dottie and I remember a cartoon showing a guy lazily leaned back in his office chair, his feet on an uncluttered cob-webby desk, … Continue reading
FROM LENINGRAD WITH LOVE, OR AT LEAST WITH DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
GUIDEBOOKS CAN provide more than details of locale; they may also offer directions to thought. Certainly my Leningrad Guide, 1930, is such an example. Published within two decades of the … Continue reading
1916 GALLAUDET D-1 SEAPLANE—THE TRADEOFFS OF INNOVATION
SOME AIRCRAFT INNOVATIONS, such as ailerons and joystick, proved lasting. Others may have been based on sound engineering principles, but this wasn’t enough. An example is the patented Gallaudet Drive, … Continue reading
ARG! THEY BE RAIDING ICELAND! OPERA TO COME
FOLLOWING THE TRAIL of a newly translated book leads me to learn things about Barbary pirates, Iceland, a Mozart opera, a possibly fallen woman and my surname. Today’s tale is … Continue reading
NANOTECH AND THE LITHIUM BATTERY
BATTERIES OF lithium-ion technology are the current state of the art, suppling power to everything from smart phones to Battery Electric Vehicles. Plenty of companies worldwide are striving to make … Continue reading
FLIGHT AND THE GREAT SPHINX
EGYPT DOESN’T OCCUPY a great deal of my memory bank, nor of the items here at SimanaitisSays. There’s Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, this opera and its wayward tomb doors and Winston Churchill’s … Continue reading
FOX DOES HEIDI
SO THERE I WAS this past weekend, enjoying Mobil 1 Radio Le Mans. Initially, I used the Internet to listen to these engaging and knowledgeable Brits reporting from the circuit’s … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 