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IF YOU’RE MISERABLE AT YOUR LIFE, DON’T READ ANY FURTHER
THE HISTORY QUIZ WEBSITE recently posted “Get a Purr-fect Score on This History of Cats Quiz.” Being as I am a cat-loving grandfather, I recall the asinine comment made by JD Vance about “childless...
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REUSE, DON’T DIG UP
A STANFORD UNIVERSITY REPORT SAYS “Recycling Lithium-ion Batteries Delivers Significant Environment Benefits” compared with mining and processing new materials. “On a large scale,” Stanford...
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REGIONAL YUMS
THE DISCOVERY BLOG OFFERS “10 Regional U.S. Dishes You Have to Try Once,” several of which I’ve enjoyed more than that. I’ve picked out five of them to share here, together with personal comments...
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GEE, WHAT IF I HAD HAD THE MONEY….
WHAT A NEAT IDEA FROM reader Steve Hagen: Old R&T Market Places “had some truly great buying opportunities,” he writes. Indeed, here are tidbits gleaned from just one issue, February 1955. I’ve...
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HAPPY 100TH AUTOMOTIVE NEWS!
IT WAS IN 1925 THAT AUTOMOTIVE DAILY NEWS published its first issues—in of all places, New York City. (“I go somewhere, I take a cab….”) Of course, we know it today as Detroit-based Automotive News, a...
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SHAKESPEARE’S BEHIND
NOW THAT I’VE GOT YOUR ATTENTION, there’s nothing scatological here. Rather, it’s a timely update of “Do Our Languages Shape Us? Or Do We Shape Our Languages?” Background. There we learned from Manvir...
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F1 CARS AS KINETIC ART
CURATORS AT THE PIRELLI HANGARBICOCCA say “Jean Tinguely (Fribourg, 1925–Bern, 1991) is considered one of the pioneering artists of the 20th century. As one of the most important exponents of kinetic...
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U.S. SCIENCE UPENDED
IT IS A CHAOTIC PERIOD AND AAAS Science described Trump’s first weeks in office as “New Administration Upends U.S. Science.” Here are tidbits gleaned from this and related articles. Quoted comments...
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LAURA D. FAIR—FEMME FATALE EXTRAORDINAIRE OR A WOMAN SCORNED? PART 1
YOU’D HAVE TO BE OF “A CERTAIN AGE” to remember the original “Crime Classics” radio show (June 1953-June 1954). Or maybe you caught “Enjoying Crime Classics, Obsessively” here at SimanaitisSays....
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LAURA D. FAIR—FEMME FATALE EXTRAORDINAIRE OR A WOMAN SCORNED? PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1, Mrs. Laura D. Fair led an adventurous life of five marriages and an extended affair culminating in her shooting her lover after his being reluctant to divorce his wife. Today in...
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THINKING ABOUT CHANGE
THE INSPIRING QUOTES WEBSITE often lives up to its name. Indeed, its February 14, 2025, posting caught my eye: “Reframing the Way You Look at Change.” I’d have to think hard to imagine a time I’ve...
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THE SERENDIPITOUS JOYS OF RESEARCH PART 1
RECENTLY “SHAKESPEARE’S BEHIND” CONCLUDED with my noting, “It was good fun researching this one.” And the “Laura D. Fair” piece had a similar conclusion: “It makes for a nice research project here at...
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THE SERENDIPITOUS JOYS OF RESEARCH PART 2
YESTERDAY’S JOYS OF RESEARCH concluded with citing my youthful weekly fix of Double-Crostic puzzles. Caitlin Lovinger describes this word game in “Variety: Acrostic,” The New York Times, July 17,...
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MORGAN PLUS 4—A 1959 PERSPECTIVE
“THE MORGAN OF TODAY,” R&T WROTE in September 1959, “is the Morgan of the past and, in all likelihood, the Morgan of the future.” It has been 66 years now. There have been differences. But the...
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THE EMPEROR’S NEW CASH
WITH RESPECTFUL APPRECIATION OF Keiserens Nye Klæder by Hans Christian Andersen. Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and...
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H.L. MENCKEN REVISITED PART 1
I’VE ALREADY SHARED MY FAVORITE H.L. MENCKEN line: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Another equally appropriate one these days...
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H.L. MENCKEN REVISITED PART 2
LET’S CONTINUE ENJOYING the acerbic wit of H.L. Mencken. One excellent source of this is his Chrestomathy, (from the Greek adjective chrēstos, “useful,” and the verb manthanein, “to learn), now in its...
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DIGITAL OVERLOAD—TWO BOOKS (HOW QUAINT BUT EFFECTIVE)
JENNIFER SZALAI’S “How Big Tech Mined Our Attention and Broke Our Politics” appeared in The New York Times Book Review (alas, perhaps behind a paywall). Yet it contains tidbits well worth the...
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“IT AIN’T WHA’CHA SAYS, IT’S HOW YOU SAYS IT”
“THAT CROONER,” THE FEMALE HUMPBACK CONFESSES, “melts my heart.” “The complexity of humpback whale songs is suspected to attract females for mating.” Image by D. Parer and E. Parer-Cook in Science...
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WOULD YOU BUY A USED (OR NEW) CAR FROM THIS MAN?
I DON’T RECALL ELON MUSK (aka “The Chainsaw Wielder”) being on any ballots. Yet he has become BBF of the guy who won by a mere 1.5 percent of the 2024 popular vote. (A show of hands of those wishing...
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