LET’S CELEBRATE WILLIAM VINCENT WALLACE’S LURLINE
WILLIAM VINCENT WALLACE’S OPERA LURLINE is about the Lorelei, and his life is every bit as adventurous as this legend of the Rhine seductress. I learned about Wallace from Una … Continue reading
WILLIAM DAVENANT—SHAKESPEARE’S SON?? PART 2
YESTERDAY WE INTRODUCED WILLIAM DAVENANT, English playwright spanning a particularly complex period of that country’s history encompassing regicide, civil war, and a real piece of work in Lord Protector Cromwell. … Continue reading
SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT—SHAKESPEARE’S SON?? PART 1
ROMANTIC THEORIES HAVE SPICED UP HISTORY: Caesar and Mark Anthony both slept with Cleopatra (true, albeit separately). Sir William Davenant was William Shakespeare’s illegitimate son (might this explain Anne Hathaway’s … Continue reading
FAKE IT TILL IT MAKES IT
HALLUCINATIONS MADE BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE are rooted in the adage above. Celina Zhao recounts, “A.I. Hallucinates Because It’s Trained to Fake Answers It Doesn’t Know,” AAAS Science, October 28, 2025. … Continue reading
MACHEATH’S LADY FRIENDS PART 2
YESTERDAY WE CELEBRATED MACHEATH, a theatrical alter ego of real 17th-century Brit bad guy Jack Sheppard. This got us investigating Mack’s lady friends, “Suky Tawdry, Jenny Diver, Lotte Lenya and … Continue reading
MACHEATH’S LADY FRIENDS PART 1
THIS RESEARCH STARTED INNOCENTLY ENOUGH with Louis Armstrong’s “Mack the Knife.” He sings, “Suky Tawdry, Jenny Diver, Lotte Lenya, Sweet Lucy Brown,/ Oh the line forms on the right, dear,/ … Continue reading
SCIENCE AND OUR WORLD
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, ENGLISH MATHEMATICIAN ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD delivered a series of Lowell Lectures titled Science and the Modern World. In a “Classics Revisited” essay, Science, October 16, 2025, … Continue reading
“WINDOW; WINDOW IN THE TEST; WHO’S AMONG THE VERY BEST?” PART 2
YESTERDAY, THE 1982 R&T BOUND VOLUME brought back memories of tire testing. We continue here with details of our hard-working tire-changing crew, confidence windows, blind testing, and an R&T visit … Continue reading
“WINDOW; WINDOW IN THE TEST; WHO’S AMONG THE VERY BEST?” PART 1
I WAS RECENTLY RESEARCHING SOMETHING OR OTHER in the 1982 bound volume of R&T and came upon this subhead cited above. It brought memories of a significant achievement during my … Continue reading
QUAINT LITTLE PUBS
AND WHEN I SAY “LITTLE”…. IN PARTICULAR, KAREN BONES IS A SCOTTISH ARTIST EXTRAORDINAIRE who “started making miniature buildings as a natural progression.” Karen Bones and her artful miniatures. This … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 