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FEAR ITSELF AND OTHER INAUGURAL COMMENTS
THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD CHOSE A TELLING QUOTATION in “Standing Up to Donald Trump’s Tactics,” Opinion, January 17, 2025: “ ‘Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.’ Donald...
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THIS PORSCHE SPEEDSTER IS SUPER
I’M SPEAKING OF THE ENGINE, THAT IS. Back in May 1955, R&T noted, “The Porsche Speedster is available with a choice of engines, the model priced at $2995 having a 1488 cc engine rated by the...
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STREET MURALS (CAST YOUR BALLOT!)
DOES ANYONE RECALL that wonderful Alec Guinness flick, The Horse’s Mouth? IMBd describes this 1958 satire/screwball comedy about Gulley Jimson, “an ill-behaved, lovably scruffy painter… determined to...
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A CHEEZY COMMENTARY
ALWAYS FOLLOWING THE HEP SIDE OF PROGRESSIVE AMERICAN CULTURE, I’m here today to celebrate Velveeta, Kraft Heinz’s “Pasteurized Recipe Cheese Product.” Image from Smithsonian Magazine. My starting...
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THE FOUR B’S, LYSISTRATA, THE SECOND GREATEST SEX, AND IS THAT A GUN IN YOUR...
KEEPING HEP ON WORLD CULTURE is a non-trivial activity. Here I was listening to my 6:00 a.m. BBC World Service and it mentioned the Korean Four B’s. This encouraged a Wikipedia search on the 4B...
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THE FOUR B’S, LYSISTRATA, THE SECOND GREATEST SEX, AND IS THAT A GUN IN YOUR...
YESTERDAY, BBC WORLD SERVICE GOT US STARTED with the Four B’s, a 21st-century movement inspired by Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata, wherein she and her pals swear off sex until their husbands and lovers...
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IS “HER JOE” READY FOR THE STATES?
IN HIS “MISC. RAMBLINGS,” MAY 1955, R&T Editor John R. Bond lamented “Road testing, after the first two or three, is not fun. It’s plain hard work, enlivened only by the fact that we are at least...
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HOLMES IN THE STRAND MAGAZINE PART 1
ARTIFACTS OF THE WORLD’S FIRST CONSULTING DETECTIVE are familiar—the oversize meerschaum pipe with its crooked stem, the deerstalker cap, the magnifying glass. Curiously, though, one of these items is...
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HOLMES IN THE STRAND MAGAZINE PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE CLARIFIED SOME MATTERS ABOUT Sherlock Holmes’ stuff: a non-Canonical crooked-stem meerschaum and his authentic country-attire deerstalkers. We continue today in Part 2 with other head...
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HEALTH RESORTS—JUST IN TIME AND PLACE
THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN. TRUMP WANTS TO “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” by turning the clock back to President McKinley’s time. This, despite plenty of us having already had enough of seemingly Gilded Age...
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THE MOST HAPPY FELON—A SCREENPLAY
SO IT’S THE EARLY 1930S AND I’M WORKING ON THIS HOLLYWOOD SCREENPLAY. Geez, gimme a break. It’s better than standing in a bread line, and as it’s Pre-Code I don’t have to worry about a happy ending or...
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BELL AIRACOBRA/KINGCOBRA: INNOVATIVE AIRCRAFT, RUSSIAN FAV, ADVANCED...
THE BELL AIRACOBRA WAS ADVANCED in several ways and disadvantaged in others. A lot has been written about its virtues and vices. Yet the aircraft and its offspring became one of the favorites—and most...
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BELL AIRACOBRA/KINGCOBRA: INNOVATIVE AIRCRAFT, RUSSIAN FAV, ADVANCED...
YESTERDAY THE BELL P-39 EXHIBITED advanced features combined with some faults. Today in Part 2 it becomes a Russian fav and has two unorthodox variants. Lend-Lease P-39s. Even with these tradeoffs,...
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FRED ASTAIRE AND CAVALIER’S MG TD PART 1
SO WHAT’S THE LINK BETWEEN FRED ASTAIRE and the car R&T called “As Friendly as a Tail-Wagging Dog”? Image from That’s Entertainment, 1974. Fred is examining magazines in a Santa Fe Railway...
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FRED ASTAIRE AND CAVALIER’S MG TD PART 2
Yesterday, an airborne MG TD popped from a magazine cover as Fred Astaire ambled by, or so it seemed watching part of MGM’s Entertainment trilogy. Today in Part 2 we glean tidbits from its more than...
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A FAULTY MODEL FOR CLEAN ENERGY?
CONVENTIONAL THINKING HAS ENERGY EMPLOYMENT being a series of transitions shaping modern history. Quoting Adam Tooze’s “Trouble Transitioning,” London Review of Books, January 23, 2025: “The first was...
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THE SHIITAKE LOOKED ESPECIALLY APPETIZING
THE SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS LOOKED BRIGHT and appetizing in the Vons produce department. My freezer already had Wild Argentine Red Shrimp (ha. sounds like one of Trump’s WWE cage pals), so dinner planning...
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PURPOSE-BUILT—AND NOT FOR THE STREET
“COMPETITION CARS,” I ONCE NOTED, “are a hoot to drive, mainly because they make few concessions to anything resembling practicality.” And back in 1955 R&T wrote along similar lines in its test of...
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TRUMP’S “ALTERNATIVE FACTS”
KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT, famously coined the term “alternative facts” to describe what turned out to be falsehoods uttered by Press Secretary Sean Spicer about the crowd count at...
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NOTES ON HARD TIMES
GEE, WHY EVER SHOULD this title about George Orwell catch my eyes these days? Now you tell one. Remarkable Diaries: The World’s Greatest Diaries, Journals, Notebooks, and Letters, foreward by...
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