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FLAME EATER ATMOSPHERIC ENGINE
MY 21ST-CENTURY Flame Eater atmospheric engine is a technical delight that traces its origin back 300 years to the dawn of mechanical power. The very earliest of engines were of this atmospheric...
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BLACK BEAUTY = PHANTOM CORSAIR?
I BELIEVE I’ve identified Black Beauty, the car used by the Green Hornet—the real old-time-radio Green Hornet, not some latter-day phony-schmony counterpart in a rudely customized Chrysler, for...
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HOCKNEY ART: STAGE AND i
BRITISH ARTIST David Hockney, age 76, has never shied away from new media. In the early 1980s, he formed scenic montages, each Polaroid snapshot not quite merging with the next. Later, he experimented...
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LOUGHEAD AND THE ALCOR C-6-1 JR. TRANSPORT
AVIATION BUFFS may connect a fellow named Allan Loughead with an aircraft company named Lockheed. But I wonder how many recognize one of his aviation achievements, the svelte 1938 Alcor C-6-1 Jr....
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WE ARE WEIRD
A PROVOCATIVE recent book offers the view that we have a lot to learn from primitive societies—from what we might call uncivilized sorts. What with savage rites and all, I’m not sure I buy into this...
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CHRYSLER FIVE-PACK
I CONFESS that this title sounds like Chrysler getting into the brewery business with a cost-cutting move. But, in fact, the Chrysler Five-Pack is one of World War II’s success stories. There are...
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HOLMES IN AMERICA?
DID SHERLOCK Holmes ever set foot on the North America continent? I mean actually, not just in those charming, but non-Canonical pastiches. Watson’s chronicles are wonderfully ambiguous in this regard....
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WHAT A SYNECDOCHE!
WORDS CAN arise in the most circuitous ways. I was reading about French president Francois Hollande’s relational complexities—His Élysée Palace live-in pal, Valérie Trierweiler, apparently moving out...
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WORLD WAR I AVIATION
AVIATION ENTERED World War I as almost a curiosity, balloons and fledgling aeroplanes used for observation and little more. Within five years, 1914-1918, aircraft became deadly weapons bringing warfare...
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EARL MADMAN MUNTZ
MORE THAN 50 years before the TV show “Mad Men” sought to portray advertising extremes, an entrepreneur known as Madman Muntz promoted everything from cars to TVs to home videos to cell phones. Earl...
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