By Eric Pettifor Remember those wonderful glasses from the ’50s with the plastic browline and the metal under-rim? If not from your actual life, then from the movies? They’re the classic glasses of both the G-man (“government man,” FBI) and Malcolm X, and all kinds of other people from all walks of life. They were […]
Stradivari’s Secret
What makes the violins of Antonio Stradivari stand out in quality beyond those of any maker since? What is his secret? Perhaps there is none, and this idea that no maker can equal or surpass the Cremonese master is nonsense, hype, a myth. Perhaps Stradivari was simply a master craftsman who produced violins at the […]
Liberate your feet
Recently I followed my sister on a quest for running shoes. They had to be New Balance brand. She swears by them. We found some in a sports store in a mall. I’m glad she wasn’t after Nikes, because we all know the history of Nike’s exploitation of workers in the third world, and I […]
Klassic keyboards
I got my first IBM style PC (as opposed to Commodore, Atari, Apple II) about 1990. A lot has improved since then; just about everything, in fact. With one glaring exception — the keyboard. My first keyboard had 101 keys, no presumptuous “Windows” key (though back in those pre-Linux days the presumption would have been […]
Of lights and lasers
Now that I’ve just about completely replaced all incandescent lights in my apartment with compact fluorescents (CFL), GE has announced a new, improved, more energy efficient incandescent. Eventually, they say, it’ll be better than CFL. What’s up with that, and why didn’t they do it sooner? The press release doesn’t say, and I won’t speculate […]
