QUANTUM COMPUTER UPDATE
QUANTUM MECHANICS can revolutionize computing, provided its qubits can be made to behave better than conventional digital computer bits. Science, the weekly magazine of the American Association for the Advancement … Continue reading
BUGATTIS AT INDY
LINK THESE: BUGATTI, the Indy 500, a Prince, a Count, Ian Fleming and Muroc Dry Lake. This linkage is all the more astounding because it is exmplified in a single … Continue reading
FOOTBALL AND A DOXOLOGY
I WAS ENJOYING this year’s BBC World Service Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, and this led me directly to high school football in the 1950s. … Continue reading
AERO BASE MICROWING BLÉRIOT XI
IT’S SORT OF Christmas early: The instructions read “Not Suitable Under 15 Years of Age. Tools Recommended: Modelling Knife, Tweezers, Instant Glue.” They neglected to add “Helpful To Have The … Continue reading
JAPAN SET DESIGN 1979–1983
THIS BOOK, PUBLISHED in 1985, is three decades old, but its stage and television set designs seem as fresh as today’s. Plus, from a bibliophilic point of view, it’s simply … Continue reading
RIFFING OFF
I CONFESS TO being sometimes a little behind the identification of trends. For example, in the November 3, 2016, issue of the London Review of Books I learned the term … Continue reading
THINKING–AND THE TURK
HOW DO WE think? In these days of artificial intelligence, not to say unexpected political outcomes, this question is a non-trivial one. A new book on this, and more, is … Continue reading
SPITFIRE FLYING, SELF-TAUGHT
I WAS SORTING through one thing and another when I came upon the British Air Ministry’s 1943 Air Publication 1565K, Spitfire F XII Pilot’s Notes. The Supermarine Spitfire single-seat fighter … Continue reading
CELEBRATING WWW: WRETCHED WRITERS WELCOME
VICTORIAN AUTHOR Edward Bulwer-Lytton couldn’t have sensed his place in literary history when he began his 1830 novel Paul Clifford with these immortal words: “It was a dark and stormy … Continue reading
PATATAS, PIMIENTOS Y LANGOSTINOS
HERE IN THE U.S., the Spanish word langostino describes the squat lobster. It’s neither prawn, nor shrimp, nor a lobster, actually closer to the hermit crab. But our local Trader … Continue reading
