PHILIP MARLOWE—SHAMUS EXTRAORDINAIRE
RAYMOND CHANDLER’S Philip Marlowe is almost as real to me as the real Sherlock Holmes. An epitome of the hardboiled detective, Philip Marlowe has been portrayed by Humphrey Bogart, Dick … Continue reading
COMMON CORE MATH
LET’S begin paradoxically with a summary: Old Math is rote memory and recitation of facts. New Math is rigor describing what numbers are. Common Core Math is intuition describing what … Continue reading
A TRIO OF COOKBOOKS
I’VE BEEN accumulating cookbooks since the early 1960s. Three of them surfaced recently as I looked up recipes. Talk about a diverse trio of cookbook authors! A black chef from … Continue reading
WOODSMAN, PLY THAT TREE
PLYWOOD IS the world’s first composite material. This sandwiching of wood has been around for more than 200 years. It has numerous domestic uses. Its heritage in aviation is rich; … Continue reading
SCIENCE TIDBITS
CHERRY-PICKING SCIENCE can lead to deception. That is, sharing an interesting tidbit that stresses a single aspect of a complex matter obviously does not tell the full story. But it … Continue reading
DE HAVILLAND “MOZZIE”
THE DE HAVILLAND 98 Mosquito was one of the most versatile aircraft of World War II. No other aircraft served so many roles as a day and night fighter, bomber, … Continue reading
POWER QUANTS
IT’S QUITE enough to give mathematics a bad name. “Traders Profit as Power Grid is Overworked,” in The New York Times, August 14, 2014, explains how “quants” (those mathematically trained … Continue reading
TOYS—1927
NOT TO sound like an old guy—which, of course, I am—but today’s play for kids seems a bit artificial, if not downright electronically weird. By contrast, one of the books … Continue reading
GAMESMANSHIP—WITH A MOTORING SUBTEXT
STEPHEN POTTER (not related to Harry) was a British academic, writer/producer at the BBC and most revered for putting self-help books in their place. He originated the Theory and Practice … Continue reading
DUTCH DARRIN’S FORD CABRIOLET
THE TERM custom coachwork may not resonate with the name Ford as readily as with Roll-Royce, Duesenberg or Packard. Nor does a relocation from Paris to Los Angeles seem the … Continue reading
